160. Those who allow physiognomy to regulate the great outlines of
character, and reject its minute discriminations, admit a language and
reject its elements.
161. The difficulty of physiognomy is to separate the essence from
accident, growth from excrescence.
162. He who aims at the sublime, consults the classes assigned to
character by physiognomy, not its anatomy of individuals; the oak in its
full majesty, and not the thwarted pollard.
163. None ever escaped from himself by crossing seas; none ever peopled
a barren fancy and a heart of ice with images or sympathies by
excursions into the deserts of mythology or allegory.
164. The principles of allegory and votive composition are the same;
they unite with equal right the most distant periods of time and the
most opposite modes of society: both surround a real being, or allude to
a real act, with symbols by long general consent adopted, as expressive
of the qualities, motives, and circumstances that distinguished or gave
evidence to the person or the transaction. Such is the gallery of the
Luxembourg, such the Attila of the Vatican.