and Imitation. Pursuing this hint, he examined the heads of the credulous whenever they fell in his way; and found the disposition invariably associated with this development. It is the foundation of curiosity, and when large, produces credulity, a tendency to be astonished and to believe in proportion to the improbability of a narrative; it leads to belief in ghosts and witchcraft, and was the foundation of the Scottish superstition called second sight.*

My own observations in regard to it have been to this effect: Those in whom I have seen it large have had great love of news-the wonderful always delighted them; the novels of the Arabian Nights, the unexpected incidents of

*I am acquainted with a gentleman of great erudition, formerly a Senator of New York, and now holding a judicial station, who firmly believes that he possesses this extraordinary gift, and that he has held communication with spirits. In him wonder is largely developed.

Soon after Santa Anna entered Texas, this gentleman announced to a friend, that the Texans had defeated the Mexicans, and that Santa Anna was killed. When asked how he knew, he replied that he had seen what he stated. News soon came that about that time the Texans did obtain a victory over the Mexicans, that Santa Anna was taken prisoner, and had been in great danger of being put to death, a confirmation sufficiently near to render the previous assertion remarkable.

It appears to me that the above case may be thus explained. The gentleman knew that the Texans had asserted their independence, that a Mexican army had entered Texas for the purpose of reducing them to obedience and punishing them for revolt, that a battle must take place. His large intellectual faculties enabled him to appreciate the comparative firmness, enterprise and daring of the combatants, and to arrive at the conclusion that, notwithstanding disparity of numbers, the Texans would be victorious. Sympathy with his countrymen would probably aid in the formation of this conclusion. So far there is merely an ordinary exertion of the intellectual powers, but instead of the result presenting itself in the customary form, predominating Wonder, caused the intellect to so vary its usual mode of procedure that, for its gratification, the perceptive faculties secreted, as it were, the results to which the reflective faculties had arrived, and fashioned them into a scene or vision. It appears to me that this explanation may be applyed to all the so called cases of second sight.

sure.

the Waverly novels, were to them a source of extreme pleaThere was a look of wonder about the countenance: the exterior angle of the eye was drawn upward. Those in whom I found this organ deficient had no such taste; their delight was to strip every narration of the wonderful, and reduce it to what they would call plain common sense.

I am disposed to consider the primary function of this organ to be the Love of the New. Change is the character of the world. Wonder is given to put us in harmony with the perpetual succession of new objects which supply the place of the old. Destructiveness put us in harmony with decay, Wonder with renovation. Mr. Bryant, I find, has noticed the harmonious and benevolent operation of these two processes:

My heart is awed within me, when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on
In silence round me-the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
For ever. Written on thy works, I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.

Lo! all grow old and die! But see again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses-ever gay and beautiful youth,
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them!"

If this organ be, as I believe, the Love of the New, then its activity is probably an element in the interest we take in changes of fashion. To many novelty is always pleasing; a new fashion is admired and thought beautiful; an old one seems unsightly. The dress and furniture of the early part of the reign of George II. excites our surprise; we wonder how people could ever admire them, yet they were admired when new. Of course, there are forms and fashions which are intrinsically beautiful; beauty which never palls, objects over which fashion exercises no control. A Chinese tea-pot may be rendered agreeable by fashion, but

will look ugly when the mode changes; but the exquisite vases dug from Herculaneum, are as much admired now as ever, they please in all countries and all ages.

This faculty stimulates to the love of adventure. Sir John Ross observed it to be strongly developed in boys who ran away from home to follow the sea. Some imagine that a voyage, with its hardships and dangers, will soon cure the lads of their fancy; but in this they are not seldom disappointed; the very dangers have a charm in them to a mind thus constituted.

The faculty of Wonder aids Genius, by prompting it to originality; in Scott, it was much more strongly developed than Ideality; and the tendency of his mind corresponded with the development. This leads me to notice the head of Sir Walter which is sold in this country. It is a palpable forgery. The face is very like, and the general form correct; but the dimensions are greatly exaggerated, as if to excite the organ of which we now speak. I have seen Scott a thousand times, and have a perfectly exact bust of his head, modelled by Mr. MacDonald; I therefore know what I say to be correct.

In its higher degrees of development, Wonder becomes a passion for the marvellous. I know a very intelligent gentleman of Edinburgh, in whose head this organ is very large; who remarked to me that he had often for his part wondered at people requiring evidence to enable them to believe. In his own mind the strongest intuitive tendency was toward belief, no matter how strange the thing to be believed. Wonder should be very strongly manifested in the heads of those persons who embrace readily all that is mysterious in Animal Magnetism.

This is a representation of the head of Tasso, who believed that he held converse with spirits; in him Wonder and Ideality are both very large. This is the head of Baron Swedenborg, who believed himself called to reveal the most hidden mysteries concerning the spiritual world. "In

1743," said he, "it pleased the Lord to manifest himself to me, and to appear before me, to give me a knowledge of the spiritual world, and to place me in communication with angels and spirits; and this power has been contin d with me till the present day." "Swedenborg," say his biographers, "was a man of unquestionable sincerity, but one of the most extravagant enthusiasts that ever lived." I have seen a number of Swedenborg's followers, and this region is much developed in all of them. I must add that I have found them to be a moral and very amiable class of men. Mr. N– of whom I have before spoken, was troubled with apparitions during the latter part of his life. These gave him amusement at first, as he was fully aware of their unreal nature. He would see a long train of Greeks, then of Turks, then of his own countrymen pass before his eyes,

each in appropriate costume. At last one vision became so terribly real that he never afterward spoke of these visitations. He saw his wife, who had been dead some years, standing in the room; and so life-like was the appearance that he spoke to her. She walked toward the window: he followed her; it was not till his head and hands crashed against the glass that he became convinced of the illusion. After death, the appearance of the dura mater and skull over this organ indicated that chronic inflammation had existed.

Sir Walter Scott remarks that "no man ever succeeded in imposing himself upon the public as a supernatural personage, who was not to a certain extent the dupe of his own imposture."

There is a great difference of development in this region among different nations. In the ancient Greek skulls it is large; in the Peruvian skulls it is extremely large-and they were exceedingly credulous, taking the Spaniards for supernatural beings; in the New Hollanders, on the contrary, the organ is very small. Captain Cook remarks that when his ship went near the shore, some natives were walking along; and, though the sight of a ship under sail must have been as strange a sight to them, as a conveyance from the moon would be to us, they hardly stopped an instant, but just glanced toward it and trudged on.

The manifestations of this sentiment are finely delineated by Akenside in his Pleasures of the Imagination :'

"Witness the sprightly joy, when aught unknown
Strikes the quick sense, and wakes each active power
To brisker measures. Witness the neglect

Of all familiar prospects, though beheld

With transports once; the fond, attentive gaze
Of young astonishment; the sober zeal

Of age, commenting on prodigious things :
For such the bounteous providence of heaven,

In every breast implanting the desire
Of objects new and strange, to urge us on