BEAUTY;
ILLUSTRATED CHIEFLY BY AN
ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION
OF
BEAUTY IN WOMAN,
BY ALEXANDER WALKER,
AUTHOR OF “INTERMARRIAGE,” “WOMAN,” “PHYSIOGNOMY FOUNDED
ON PHYSIOLOGY,” “THE NERVOUS SYSTEM,” ETC.
EDITED BY AN AMERICAN PHYSICIAN
NEW YORK:
HENRY G. LANGLEY, 8 ASTOR-HOUSE.
1845.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1840,
By J. & H. G. LANGLEY,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New
York
STEREOTYPED BY J. S. REDFIELD,
13 Chambers Street, New York
DEDICATION.
TO
GEORGE BIRBECK, M.D., F.G.S.,
PRESIDENT OF THE LONDON MECHANICS’ INSTITUTION, &c., &c., &c.
A department of science, which in many respects must be regarded as new,cannot so properly be dedicated to any one as to the inventor of the bestmode of diffusing scientific knowledge among the most meritorious and mostoppressed classes of society.
When the enemies of freedom, in order effectually to blind the victims oftheir spoliation, imposed a tax upon knowledge, you rendered theacquirement of science easy by the establishment of mechanics’institutions—you gave the first and greatest impulse to that diffusion ofknowledge which will render the repetition of such a conspiracy againsthumanity impossible.
You more than once also wrested a reluctant concession, in behalf ofuntaxed knowledge, from the men who had evidently succeeded, in somedegree, to the spirit, as well as to the office, of the original[Pg iv]conspirators, and who unwisely hesitated between the bad interest which issoon felt by all participators in expensive government, and their dread ofthe new and triumphant power of public opinion, before which they know andfeel that they are but as the chaff before the whirlwind.
For these services, accept this respectful dedication, as the expressionof a homage, in which I am sure that I am joined by thousands of Britons.
Nor, in writing this, on a subject of which your extensive knowledgeenables you so well to judge, am I without a peculiar and personal motive.
I gratefully acknowledge that, in one of the most earnest and strenuousmental efforts I ever made, in my work on “The Nervous System,” I owed toyour cautions as to logical reasoning and careful induction, an anxiety atleast, and a zeal in these respects, which, whatever success may haveattended them, could not well be exceeded.
I have endeavored to act conformably with the same cautions in the presentwork. He must be weak-minded, indeed, who can seek for aught in philosophybut the discovery of truth; and he must be a coward who, believing he hasdiscovered it, has any scruple to announce it.
ALEXANDER WALKER.
April 10, 1836.
AMERICAN ADVERTISEMENT.
The present volume completes the series of Mr. Walker’s anthropologicalworks. To say that they have met with a favorable reception from theAmerican public, would be but a very inadequate expression of theunprecedented success which has attended their publication.“Intermarriage,” the first of the series, passed through six largeeditions within eighteen