for that the very next
day she might turn out the very reverse of the character that she had
appeared in during all the preceding time.'(1) I could not help admiring
the superior sagacity of the French juggler, and it struck me then that
we could never be sure when we had got at the bottom of this riddle.

There are various ways of getting at a knowledge of character--by looks,
words, actions. The first of these, which seems the most superficial, is
perhaps the safest, and least liable to deceive: nay, it is that which
mankind, in spite of their pretending to the contrary, most generally go
by. Professions pass for nothing, and actions may be counterfeited; but
a man cannot help his looks. 'Speech,' said a celebrated wit, 'was given
to man to conceal his thoughts.' Yet I do not know that the greatest
hypocrites are the least silent. The mouth of Cromwell is pursed up in
the portraits of him, as if he was afraid to trust himself with words.
Lord Chesterfield advises us, if we wish to know the real sentiments of
the person we are conversing with, to look in his face, for he can more
easily command his words than his features. A man's whole life may be
picture painted of him by a great artist would probably stamp his
true character on the canvas, and betray the secret to posterity.
Men's opinions were divided, in their lifetimes, about such prominent
personages as Charles V. and Ignatius Loyola, partly, no doubt, from
passion and interest, but partly from contradictory evidence in their
ostensible conduct: the spectator, who has ever seen their pictures by
Titian, judges of them at once, and truly. I had rather leave a good
portrait of myself behind me than have a fine epitaph. The face, for the
most part, tells what we have thought and felt--the rest is nothing. I
prefixed to his poems than from anything he ever wrote. Caesar's
_Commentaries_ would not have redeemed him in my opinion, if the bust of
him had resembled the Duke of Wellington. My old friend Fawcett used
to say, that if Sir Isaac Newton himself had lisped, he could not have
thought anything of him. So I cannot persuade myself that any one is a
great man who looks like a fool. In this I may be wrong.

First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to
our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions
or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his
countenance by the events of his whole life, nay