The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1885-07-10
a NOSE cHAPIeR.



sopae Of the Facial characteristics Of Great
Men.
The names of the subjects of Michael
Angeles most renowned works will
happily be impressed on the memory as
firmly as his nose, when his portrait
has once been seen. In his youth he
had quarrel with companion, who
struck his nose so violently as to disfg-
ure him for life. Tycho Brache had
similarly deformed nose. Dante's nose
gives a unique expression to his face,
and makes it genus per Sc, known as
as the Dantesque face, found only in
one other great writer-George Eliot,
Who can forget the homely face of
Socrates after once seeing it,which owes
its homeliness almost entirely to his
nose? The great Greek moralist had
to hear from Zopvrus, an Athenian
physiognomist who denounced bulb
Gus nose as sign of semi-bestial ORR
gin, that one of his ancestors must have
been guilty of an inhuman messalliance
of some sort, and that the shape of his
nose implied tendency to drunken
ness, theft, brutality and lasciviousness.
But physiognomists, as such, have al
ways had great embarrassments in pass
ing impromptu judgments by the rules
of their science. The case of Lavater is
extremely ludicrous as an illustration
of this. A traveller showed him two
pictures, the one of a robber who had
been broken on the wheel; the other
was a picture of Kant, whose purity of
life has scarcely been surpassed. Lava
ter was asked to tell their characters
from the pictures. He took up the rob-
Der, and after some examination said:
''Here we have the true philosopher;
here is penetration in the eye and re-
Election in the forehead; here is cause
and there is effect; here is combination.
there is distinction; synthetic lips and
an analytic nose" Then turning to the
philosophers picture he exclaimed:
1.-The calm, thinking villain il so well
expressed and strongly marked in his
face that it needs no comment" an an
ecdote which gave Kant great pleasure,
and which he was especially delighted
to tell.
1t is for the reason of this notorious
failure of physiognomists that / dare
not tread upon the dangerous ground of
the meaning of noses, though much can
be indicated by the nose. 1t must be
remembered, however, that of tastes it
is idle to dispute. Hence, though our
own style of beauty is the Greek nose.
which continues downward from the
forehead in an almost perpendicular
line, still each race and people admires
its own style of nose. The Semetic
nose has never been associated in our
minds with beauty, yet we are spoken
of contemptuously by the Arabs and
Syrians as "flat-nOsed Franks" Shake
speare, on the other hand, must have
thought a Turks nose most abominable,
for he takes care to have it thrown into
the witches hell broth in Macbeth. :"
The Africans are proud of their broad,
flat nose, and some tribes even insert
artificial objects to increase their pet
defOrmity.
The general opinion seems to be that
possessOrs of long noses are proud and
boastful. Those who know Tennyson.
who has such a nose, are in position to
verify this opinion, for his poetry GER
tainly does not show him either boast
full or proud. He has, however, COM
mitted himself about noses. for in
MAUD" he sneered at the druggist s
clerk as q ''snub-nosed rogue" That
snub nose is considered to denote
fiery, quick temper need hardly be said.
A person with very thin nose is rarely
thought generous. So. too, great
breadth of nostrils is often associated
with coarseness. Horace has frequently
! EXPIRE ssed his views about the nose in
his poetry, and he seems to regard a
short nose with little turn-up at the
end as the mark of a jeering and
jibing person. Martial calls this the
rhinoceros nose, and says that it was
fashionable in his day. as it indicated a
satirical humor which everybody was
then affecting. Perhaps it is accidental,
but it is remarkable that Addison, the
smoothest writer of English, should
have had a smooth Greek nose. In
Rome there was whole family which
took its name from the nose-the Ma
sones, of which Ovid was the most cele-
brated member. Cicero, if Plutarch be
believed, also owes his name to his nose
as he had an excrescence of its toys in
Tie SHAPE VI IL NctcH-lu LttlH CtCtT.
Pliny denies this, however. and saws
that the Ciceros were called so from
being engaged in extensive vetch-rais-
ing. Be this as it may, Cicero's re-
markable snub nose is beyond dispute.
Gibbons nose, which gave his face .
most peculiar appearance, has found it
mate only in that of the recently de-
ceased Prince Gortschakoff, the Chan
cellor of Russia; both these noses were
small Some celebrated men, though
their noses were not remarkable for
size and shape, were still often re-
minded of this protrIding organ. The
nose of Schiller, for instance. was very
caDricious. 1t demanded the smell of
rotten apples to keep its owner in good
spirits. Equally capricious was Rants
nose. 1t could not endure the smell OF
ill-fed students. and as he was Professor
in the University of Konigsberg, his
nose gave him much trouble during his
lectures. attended as they were mostly
by ill-fed. poor students. Napoleon
likewise disliked the smell of tar, for
which he avoided, when possible, voy-
ages in ships. Philip IL, on the other
hand, smelled nothing at all. and bis
reign was none the worse for that
LaU and Order.