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    978 THE LEAD EB. fNoJg^OcTOBER 10, 1857.

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    NEW NOTES ON PHRENOLOGY. jPhrenology mad...

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    The Rebellion In India. The Rebellion In...

    Poonah had offered up prayers for the success of their co-religionists at Delhi , and that , just before the outbreak , the men at Lucknow declared themselves not only ready to bite the greased cartridges , but to eat them if the Company liked . We have little doubt that Mr . Norton ' s suggestions on military matters go far to explain the origin of the disaffection existing among the Bengal Sepoys . They accord , in many respects , with the views already stated in our columns . We have been particularly struck , however , by his concentration of testimony in support of the assertion that the Indian Government had been long , repeatedly , and incessantly warned of the

    approaching danger , and had utterly despised to take precautions . " With such an army as that of Bengal , mutiny had become a necessity , " The reasons were clearly and emphatically placed before the Board of Control ; but that department slumbered , and only awoke when it was necessary to save the empire . Mr . Norton ' s statement on this subject is overpowering , « -ven if we omit Major Bird ' s declaration that , when Oude was annexed , the Oompany ' s troops offered to aid the King in resisting that act of policy . Who is Major Bird ' s authority ? Who heard the ofler ? And who told Lord Dalhousie , or nursed the secret in his own breast until it came out at Manchester ? We should like to see this storj' confirmed .

    Mr . NoTton proposes a considerable increase of the European army in India , arguing that military colonies might be planted on the healthy hills —five thousand men on the Neilgherries , in a central situation , whence they might descend at an hour ' s notice upon any of the plains around . But he confines himself to theoretical explanations of the causes which he believes have led to the revolt . At the head of the rebels are the Mohammedans -whom we have dispossessed , making their ancient palaces our o \ ro , and curbing their ambitious pride . Next are the Brahmins , who have lost a large portion even of their moral ascendancy . " They no longer fatten on the revenue of the country , or thrive by the oppression of the masses / ' Then come the great Zemindars , and other landholders , whose estates have passed away from them . " But there anything like hatred or iealousy stops . The jrreat bulk of the people , the rvots and cultivators of

    the soil , are better off under our Government than any of its predecessors . Our policy is all in their favour . " This from an avowed enemy of the East India Company is candid , and is no more than the truth ; but how can it be reconciled -with Mr . Norton ' s previous argument to show that the natives , as a body , are disaffected , or with his subsequent proposal to restore to grinding oppression the people of some considerable territory ? He says : ¦ * ' It is not possible to conceive a greater calamity to the people of India than the present dissolution of the bonds between them and us . " Then Jaow can he ask the British Government to restore to their thrones a set of princes who would play the Findaree with their people , and create in the provinces submitted to their sway a woeful contrast to the districts under English jurisdiction ? What kingdom would be sacrificed ? Oude , or Sindh , or the Punjab ? Would he replace the crown upon the head of the

    ¦< iespot whose tax-gatherers carried firebrands among the villages , on the Ameers who levelled the habitations of the people to make room for their hunting-ground r or the Sikh chieftains who twice invaded our frontier ? It is well , indeed , to exempt the Punjab from the lLst of wanton and worthless annexations ; every man in the camp before Delhi has reason to be thankful that he might look to Lahore , when it was useless to look to Calcutta . The possession , of the Punjab gave us a basis of operations in Upper India the importance of which is not to be calculated . But we cannot consent to adopt Mr . Norton ' s antipathy to the late governor-general ; nor do we think he estimates at their due worth the opinions of Mr . Prinsep , and Mr . Campbell , whose views as to the native States are contradictory of his own . When the Neemuch rebels said to their officers , "You Banchats , have you been faithful to the King of Oude ? " we had the opinions of old Oudian

    soldiers ; when the Mahratta cried from the Sattara scaffold against the dethronement of the Rajah , he spoke as the ex-subject of an ex-king ; but he made no reference to Oude . We have heard as yet of no revolt in the Carnatic . But Mr . Norton makes a significant suggestion when he says that , when forty thousand of the subjects of the ex-King of Oude rapidly enlisted in the Bengal army from that kingdom , the Government should have been roused to suspicion . Forty thousand soldiers—ten times that number of their relatives : —we need not be surprised at the enormous rabble gathered about Lueknow . A third of the Bengal army was levied in a newly conquered province ! Yet the insurrection was not . begun by them ; they took the hint from Midnapore and Meerut . Mr . Norton argues all these topics copiously and boldly , and although we do not accept tne totality of his conclusions , we have found his volume to be one of high interest and of no little value .

    978 The Lead Eb. Fnojg^October 10, 1857.

    978 THE LEAD EB . fNoJg ^ OcTOBER 10 , 1857 .

    New Notes On Phrenology. Jphrenology Mad...

    NEW NOTES ON PHRENOLOGY . jPhrenology made Practical , and Popularly Explained . By Frederick Bridges . Low and Co . The Refugee . A . Novel . Founded on Phrenological Observations . By Alfred Godwine , Ph . D . Ilirachfcld This new study of Phrenology is lurgcly occupied with considerations on tie heads of murderers . Mr . Bridges is a master of the theory he undertakes to expound ,, but he deals moderately with its antagonists . In nil respects , lie is a writer who deserves at least to have his views fairly represented , and ,, for our own part , we prefer to dcdJTibe than to discuss the

    conclusions set forth in his small , but well-packed , neatly arranged volume . Phrenology is , as yet , an idea . It may or may not take rank among the sciences ; at all events , the greatest amount of reasoning will elicit the greatest amount of truth . We think that , in our age , there are so many minds ready to welcome with respect the propositions of bold thinkers , that no rational hypotheais . runs the risk of foundering amidst universal prejudice and the acorn of the ignorant . There is toleration even for spirituulimn , for clairvoyance , for olectro-biology ; phrenology ia in advance- of all these , since it luis established a certain set of principles , which , though not sufficient to justify the positivism of its preachers , nevertheless point the way to future developments , and encourage us in hopiu ^ that some permanent

    advantage to the human mind may be derived from the speculation * ~ t Gall , Spurzheim , Mr . Combe , and Mr . Bridges . Mr . Bridges himself 1 ™ constructed , upon phrenological lines , a model head , and has invented » mathematical instrument which he calls a Phreno-physiometer With tl facts stated in his account of historical heads most persons are famili-ir W all know what heads were possessed by Pericles , Mirabeau Danton Franklin , and Napoleon , by the Caribs and by the Hindoos We a ™ aware , moreover , of the use which has been made of the classification of temperaments—Kirke "White , Keats , Cowper , and Pope bein <» - of the nervous , Shakspeare of the nervous sanguine , Milton of the nervous-fibrous sanguine , Julius Caesar , Oliver Cromwell , and Napoleon of the fibrous sanguine nervous more or less , Wellington of the fibrous nervous , and Dp " Gall of the sanguine-fibrous nervous . Here the terms of the discussion are and necessaril k

    essentially , perhaps y , vague . Our nowled ge of the nerves and blood is limited , iu spite of anatomy and analysis . So , also , is our knowledge of the brain . We have advanced beyond Hippocrates , who re garded it as a sponge ; Aristotle , who held it to fee as a . humid mass intended to temper the heat of the body ; Descartes , who looked upon the little pineal gland as the habitation of the mind ; and others , who thought the brain was designed simply to balance the face and prevent it from inclining forward ; but what is the value of the great commissures of the brain , of the pineal gland itself , of "the mamillary bodies of the infundibulum ? Neither anatomy nor phrenology can tell us ' What proportion of the blood in the human body goet to supply the brain ? Haller says one-fifth , Munro one-tenth ; the general opinion is that it receives four times as much as any other organ of equal bulk ; but there is no certainty in the matter . The anatomist is still an

    explorer ; the phrenologist is upon his track , and sometimes far in advance of him ; but then phrenology is more audacious than anatomy . According to their viewy if the head of William Palmer could lave been reinodellet and the section marked C on the diagram could have teen cut out , he never would have been a poisoner . We have side , front , back , and top views of his head , and an ugly , heavy , misshapen head it certainly is ; but TkurteU ' s is worse , he having , as Mr . Bridges says , a basilar brain of the perfect murdering type / If this could be established beyond a doubt , the governors of prisons should be empowered to shave the heads of all the criminals under their charge , to apply the Phreno-physiometer , and to detain in perpetual custody all who proved to have ' basilar brains of the perfect murdering type . ' As partial mental idiots and perfect moral idiotsit

    , would be a mercy to them and a safeguard to society to keep their dangerous Iiands ^ from acting upon the hints of their basilar brains . We are not laughing at Mr . Bridges , but merely trying to apply his suggestions to some practical end . Palmer , he tells us , had a shallow moral region , an excess of animal feelings , great perceptive acu ten ess , a low , cunning cleverness , but an almost total , want of practical judgment . Compare his head -with that of Mr . Combe , and we have a type and anti-type . William Dove , again * was idiotic and naturally vicious , and ought to have been , according to the Phreno-physiometer rule , deprived of liberty from his childhood . There were positive organic defects in his brain , but we are not quite sure

    whether we understand Mr . Bridges on this point . Could he have told , before examining the interior structure of Dove ' s head , whether that man ought not to have been allowed personal liberty and that he was in one sense a cannibal , or that Marley ' s head demonstrated him to be a brigand and a desperate freebooter ? If not—if it be necessary to anatomize the brain— -why , there is little chance of ascertaining who has a propensity for assassination until he has been hanged for indulging in it . But we imagine , from one remark of Mr . Bridges , that he -would undertake , if appointed inspector of penal settlements , to determine what criminals should , and -what criminals should not , be allowed tickets of leave . " Tlie

    ticket-ofleave system is evidently wanting in the means by which to determine the natural tendencies of the criminals permitted to go at large . But this difficulty may now be overcome , and criminals classified witlju-jaj-uoticnl certainty . " Yet we can conceive some embarrassments arising from sucli an experiment . The convict , claiming conditional manumission , might produce certificates of good behaviour for five years , and , indeed , every requisite testimony in his favour ; but here Mr . Bridges would step forward , saying , " This man has a basilar formation ; he must be kept in irons ; if you let him go you may become responsible for a murder . " It would be necessary to establish a very certain test before condemning men to life-long captivity on account of their basilar plircno-mctrical angles of forty degrees . It may be true that this angle marked tlie brains of Barb our , Gleeson

    Wilson , Jackson , Waddington , Rush , and Fiesehi ; but do six examples supply an infallible rule ? Greenacre , the worst of murderers , ami Mrs . Gottfried , the worst of murderesses , had the worst of basilar phreno-physiometrieal angles , says Mr . Bridges ; but from what he adds we are afraid lie would be rather a formidable agent in the lands of a continental chief of police . Fieschi , lie remarks , was , from a basilar point of view , " the true type of the murderer and conspirator ; and I am sorry to say that 1 have met with too many of this class who huve talked largely of political rights and patriotism ; but I often found that notions of moral and political rights had a very dangerous range of action . " We hope Mr . Bridges has supplied no phyaio-phrenometers to tlie police of Paris or Vienna . He suuia up thus : >—

    In the skull of King Robert Bruce the bnsilar phreno-metricnl angle i . i 40 degrees ; in tho Hkull of Buniri tho poet it ra 25 degrees . 1 have mot with diutinguiuhed warriors and sportsmen in -whom tho nnglu wafl not more than 25 degrees , nnd they had great aversion to cruelty . Tho nnglti in tlie cast taken from the hentl of Nnpoloon after death is J 10 degrees . The angle is 10 decrees in RubIi , Gleeaon , Wilson , Robert Murlcy , Thurtell , Palmer , Dove , Harbour , and Waddington , who was executed at York for murder at Sliollield . It is 2 . 3 dogrues in tlio liend of Mr . George Combe , Rev . Dr . Raffles , Mr . Joseph Iluinc , Captain Puny , Dr « Spurzheim , and Dr . Enna .

    Several of tho murderers nre pointed at as gluttons or epicures . Kiinh gave strict orders that he should bo provided witu a sucking-pig and app le-sauce during his trial ; . Palmer ' s appetite never failud him ; to tlie very hist he was exceedingly anxious about his suppers . Juckuon . during the night buloro bis

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 10, 1857, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_10101857/page/18/