that 'Langford's
copper-plate copies, or indeed any other which he has seen, fail' if
tried by a certain test: what test? Why this: that 'the large hand
seen through a diminishing glass, ought to be reduced into the current
hand; and the current hand, magnified, ought to swell into a large
hand.' Whereas, on the contrary, 'the large hands reduced appear very
stiff and cramped; and the magnified running hand'--'appears little
better than a scrawl.' Now to us the result appears in a different
light. It is true that the large hands reduced do not appear good
running hands according to the standard derived from the actual
practice of the world: but why? Simply because they are too good: _i. e._
they are _ideals_ and in fact are meant to be so; and have nothing
characteristic: they are purely _generic_ hands, and therefore want
_individualisation_: they are abstractions; but to affect us
pleasurably, they should be concrete expressions of some human
qualities, moral or intellectual. Perfect features in a human face
arranged with perfect symmetry, affect us not at all, as is well
known, where there is nothing characteristic; the latency of the
individual in the generic, and of the generic in the individual, is
that which gives to each its power over our human sensibilities. And
this holds of caligraphy no less than other arts. And _that_ is the
most perfect hand-writing which unites the _minimum_ of deviation from
the ideal standard of beauty (as to the form and nexus of the letters)
with the _maximum_ of characteristic expression. It has long been
practically felt, and even expressly affirmed (in some instances even
expanded into a distinct art and professed as such), that it is
possible to determine the human _intellectual_ character as to some of
its features from the hand-writing. Books even have been written on
this art, as _e. g._ the _Ideographia_, or art of knowing the
characters of men from their hand-writings, by _Aldorisius_: and,
though this in common with all other modes of _physiognomy_, as
craniology, Lavaterianism (usually called physiognomy), &c. &c. has
laboured under the reproach of fancifulness,--yet we ought not to
attribute this wholly to the groundlessness of the art as a possible
art--but to these two causes; partly to the precipitation and
imperfect psychology of the professors; who, like the craniologists,
have been over-ready to determine the _indicantia_ before they had
settled according to any to