Three familiar lectures on craniological physiognomy : delivered before the City Philosophical Society / By a member.

Date:
1816
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Three familiar lectures on craniological physiognomy : delivered before the City Philosophical Society / By a member. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE. In an age like the present, distinguished at once for learning, licentiousness, and wit, some apology may justly be expected for presenting to the public a literary production which lays claim to neither of those recommendatory qua¬ lities. In this volume will be found no description of the manners, customs, and habits, of the Antediluvians; no eulogiums on the strength and ingenuity of the men, or the beauty and art¬ less simplicity of the women; nor any attempt to furnish a satisfactory solution of the extra¬ ordinary length of their lives, or their beards. Here are no inuendos against religion—no sar¬ casms against the clergy—no demands for po¬ litical reformation: and the reader will in vain look for a single passage that may remind him of Scarron, Voltaire, Piron, Chesterfield, Sterne, or Porson. Conscious as he is of these capital defects in his book, (which are much easier ac-