e American variant is seen in hundreds of nineteeenth
century writers, preachers, New England farmers, old Cape Cod
characters, Gloucester fishermen, actors, especially of tragic mould;
showmen, lecturers, bankers--the nose has prospered in the new world.
The significance of the feature is matched by its endurance, by the
persistency with which it appears in every decade up to the present.

For with the opening of a new century the nose, aquiline in its purest
state, equine with its accompaniment of cruel gums and sharp teeth in
its worst, seems on the point of disappearing. The contemporary
portraits of great men and beautiful women no longer display it. There
is a new nose. It is to be hoped that it retains the powers with which
the organ was originally endowed; for example, we suppose that it still
can detect and appreciate, repulse and define odours. But as a
sign-post showing the path to glory, as an index of force of character
or intellect, it is practically useless. The new nose is modest,
retiring, seeketh not its own, is never puffed up. You would know it
for a nose, certainly, but its ample and aristocratic proportions are
wanting; it lacks a bridge, is spineless, immature, unfinished. Yet it
is set in the faces of many eminent thinkers and workers among the
younger men; it is already allied to keenness of vision and talent, and
may or may not be associated with birth and good breeding. The query
is--is it a new nose, or only one that has always been with us, but is
now gradually supplanting the old one? Did the nose aquiline largely
represent class, and does the phenomenon of the new semi-straight,
semi-nothing nose represent the intrusion of mass? Against this timid
and, it may be, spurious generalization, one may pit the working-man
with the nose of a duke, and the young colonial ruler with the
unformed, delicate feature of a school-girl. So we accept the fact
that in our own day types are passing.

The English face is going. It has served its turn, perhaps. Infusion
of American and colonial blood will help to change it. The high-nosed
country gentleman or landed noble, with Berserk or Viking blood in his
veins, finds that, like Alice in Wonderland, it takes all he can do to
keep where he is, and the work entailed takes something, a good deal,
out of him. One thing goes, then another; finally, he casts away his
birthright, the arch or bridge of his nose, and his son and the younger
members o