tiness of supercilious authority; the coarse and boisterous clangour of revelry and merriment, with groans, hisses, and shouts, are all indicative of certain kinds, degrees, and states of passion.

It is from paying a close attention to those outward visible signs of the wishes, passions, and desires of men, that people are able to carry on a mutual interchange of sentiment and opinion. And it seldom happens that there is any misunderstanding amongst the parties as to the proper meaning and application of these expressions and gestures.

Every passion, emotion, and desire is strikingly pourtrayed in the expressions of the countenance, and the knowledge of these outward manifestations of the inward feelings, is the foundation of the arts of painting and sculpture, &c. "In anger and resentment, the forehead is contracted, the eye-brows are drawn towards each other, and the lips are somewhat thrust out; under the influence of fear, especially when in a great degree, the forehead and eye-brows are raised upwards; grief or sorrow causes them to assume a lowering appearance, and the cheeks to hang down; the emotion of joy, on the other hand, expands them, but contracts the cheeks, and draws up the corners of the mouth. How wonderfully eloquent, again, are the eyes!

By them alone, in reality, all the passions of the soul are expressed with a velocity, an intensity, and a correctness, which no artificial language can accomplish. We readily discover a person's intention and his feeling towards us, by what we call his looks; or in other words, the expression of his eyes; and it is to these, much more than to any spoken words, that we have recourse, on the most ordinary occurrences, in order to determine any changes of mind which may have taken place among our companions. In speaking upon pleasant and delightful subjects, the eyes are brisk and cheerful; as, on the contrary, they sink, and are languid, in delivering anything melancholy and sorrowful. This is so agreeable to nature, that, before a person speaks, we are prepared with the expectation of one or the other from his different aspect. So likewise in anger a certain vehemence and intenseness appears in the eyes, which, for want of proper words to express it by, we endeavour to represent by metaphors taken from fire, the most violent and rapid element, and say in such cases, the eyes burn, sparkle, or are inflamed. In expressions of hatred or detestation, it is natural to alter the look, either by turning the eyes aside or downwards."* In de

* Ward's System of Oratory.

signing and cunning selfishness, the eyes are contracted inwards, and nearly the same sign is considered by Hudibras as indicative of religious fanaticism and hypocrisy.

"As men of inward light are wont,

To turn their optics in upon't."

We must draw these remarks on the external signs of our passions to a close, though they might be greatly extended; and confine ourselves to a few observations on the Doctor's treatise On "The Passions." The main end for which it seems to have been composed, was to furnish additional confirmation of his favourite doctrine-that of a moral sense. It may be laid down as a principle, tacitly recognised by the general tenor of this book of the Doctor's, that wherever there is passion there must be a moral sense. If we look carefully through the writings of our most celebrated moralists, upon this disputed point of a moral sense, we will perceive, that they have generally passed over the passions in a hasty manner, and have considered them as little calculated to throw any additional light either on the one side of the controversy or on the other. They have disputed about when and in what manner we came by our notions of right and

wrong, without ever taking any particular notice of these sudden and violent emotions of our frame called passions, which are purely the external symbols or indexes of these very notions of right and wrong. Our notions of virtue and vice, seem always to be in their writings, something very different in their nature from the passions, which we are led to consider as instinctive affections. Now if we define a moral sense to what Shaftesbury, Dr. Hutcheson and others, I feel confident, always looked upon it to be, only a susceptibility of moral emotion, may we not take upon us to ask, in what respects this moral susceptibility of emotion differs from the passions? If the moral emotion be independent of the passions, it may be exercised without any connexion with them-but is this the case? Can we have a notion, that we ourselves or others have suffered a great and unmerited injury, without feeling some portion of indignation against the authors of the mischief? Can we have an idea of one, in whose welfare we take a deep interest, labouring under great evils and privations, without feeling the emotion of compassion in our breasts? Man, constituted as he is in other respects, could never be considered as a moral agent, were he destitute of passion; for if he had any notions of virtue and vice,

they could never be recognised for want of the passions, which are the external signs of these notions. In fact, it will be found upon careful examination, that this susceptibility of moral emotion, called a sense, does not differ in kind from the passions; and therefore, as these passions are allowed to be purely instinctive in their essence, the moral sense, contended for by Dr. Hutcheson and others, must be allowed a participation in the same instinctive

nature.

Dr. Hutcheson has a very fine chapter in his book on the passions, on the management of our desires, and of the best means of promoting our happiness. But to enter here into the question, what degree of influence the will has over our various passions and desires, would only be to anticipate what will have to be advanced when we come to examine some other treatises on morals.

Besides the treatises already mentioned, Dr. Hutcheson was the author of a "System of Moral Philosophy," which was published after his death by his son. The first part of this work is of a metaphysical nature; and the author endeavours to unfold the several laws of the human mind, in connexion with our moral constitution; and by this means, to trace the origin of our ideas of moral