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    Foonah 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 lite the greased cartridges , but to eat them if the Company liked . We have little doubt that Mr . Norton ' s suggestions on military matters g ^ o far to explain the origin , of the disaffection existing among the Bengal bepoys . 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 os 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 , even if w « omit Major Bird ' s declaration that , when Oude was annexed , ilxe Company ' s troops offered to aid the King in resisting that act of policy . "Who is Major Bird's authority ? Who heard the offer ? And who told iLord Dalhousie , or nursed the secret in his own breast until it came out at Manchester ? We should like to see this story confirmed .

    Mr . Norton proposes a considerable increase of tlie 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 anight descend at an hour ' s notice upon any of the plains around . But he confines himself to theoretical explanations of the causes which he fcelieves have led . to the revolt . At the head of the rebels are the Motammedans whom we have dispossessed , making thear ancient palaces our own , and curbing their ambitious jiride . Next are the Brahmins , who have lost a large portion even of their moral ascendancy . " They no longer iatfcen on the revenue of . the country , or thrive by the oppression of the anasses . " Then come the great Zemindars , and other landholders , whose

    estates have passed away from them . " But there anything like hatred or jealousy stops . The great bulk of the people , the ryots 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 ia 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 how can lie ask the British Government to restore to their thrones a set of

    princes who wauld play the Pindar . ee with their people , and create in the provinces submitted to their sway ^ a woeful contrast to the districts tinder ^ English jurisdiction ? What kingdom would be sacrificed ? Qude , or Sindh , or the Punjab ? Would he replace the erown upon the head of the despot 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 ,, or the Sikh chieftains -who twice invaded our frontier ? It is well , indeed , to exempt the Punjab from the list 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 Hajah , 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 Bubjects of the e-x-King of Oude rapidly eriBsted in the Bengal army from that kingdom , the Government -should have been roused to suspicion . Forty thousand soldiers ^ -ten tiraea that number of their relatives : •—we need not be surprised at the enormous arabble gathered about Lucknow . 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 a » d boldly , and although -we do not accept the totality of his conclusions , -we have found his volume to be one of high interest and of no little -value .

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    NEW NOTES ON PHRENOLOGY . Phrenology made Practical ^ and Popularly Exylainck . By TTreilorick Bridges . . : , ,. , Lo" \ v and Co . The Refugee . A r ' IjTovel . Founded , on Phrenological Observations . By Alfred Godwine , ?!! . !) . , ' ... ' ,. ,. ' .., "' . ' Hirachfelfl . Tpis new study of Plu ; e . nology , is largely ^ occupied witli considerations on the heads of murderers . Mr . Briflge ^ is a master of the theory ho undertakes to expound , hut he deals moderately . witli its antagonists . In all respects , he is , a writer who deaeryes at )[ east to have his views fairly represented , and , . for our own , , part .. we ,, prefer t <> dotiribo than to discuss the

    conclusions set tprtb ,, in uis si ^ all ,, but well-packed , neatly arranged volume . ' Phrenology ia , 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 . Wo thinlc that , in our age , there are po niaiiy minds ready to welcome with respect . the propositions of bold thinkors , that no rational . hypothesis runs the risk of foundering amidst universal prejudice and . the acorxi of th $ ( igj > ornnt . Thcr ^ is toleration evqn for spiritualism , for clairvoyance ,, for . eleejtro-bipjjogy ; pln-enology is in , advance of sill these , since it htia established . a , coctala . set pf nriquiD . le ^ which , though not sufficient to justify ; the- 'positivism of its preachers , nevertheless point the way to future dievolojiinpMte , and . encourage us iu hoping that some permanent

    advantage to the human mind maybe derived from the speculations-nf Gall , Spurzueim , Mr . Combe , and Mr . Bridges . Mr . Bridges himself ul constructed , upon phrenological lines , a model head , and has 'invented a mathematical instrument which he calls a Phreno-physiometei \ With the facts stated in his account of historical heads most persons are familiar w ! all know what heads were possessed by Pericles , Mirabeau , Danton Franklin , and Napoleon , "by the Caribs and b y the Hindoos . " We are aware , moreover , of the use which has been made of the classification of temperaments—Kirke White , Keats , Cowper , and Pope ' being 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 Dr * Gall of the sanguine-fibrous nervous . Here the terms of the discussion are

    essentially , and perhaps necessarily , vague . Our knowledge of the nerves and blood is limited , in spite of anatomy and-analysis . So , also , is our knowledge of the brain . ' We-have advanced beyond Hippocrates , who regarded it as a sponge ; Aristotle , who held it to be 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 ' other ' s , who . thought the brain ^ as 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 niainillary bodies of the infundibirlum ? Neither anatomy nor phrenology can tell us ! What proportion of the blood in the human body goes to supply the brain ? ¦ JBLaller says one-fifth , Munro one-tenth ; the general opinion is that it receives four times as much as any other ¦ -organ of eaual

    bulk ; but there is no certainty in the matter . The anatomist is still aa 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 view , if the head of William Palmer could have been remodelled and the section marked-C on the diagram could have been cut out , he never would have been a poisoner . " YYe have side , front , back , and top views of his head , and an ugly , heavy , misshapen head it certainly is ; but Tburtell ' 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 , tlie governors of prisons should be empowered to shave the heads of all the criminals under tlieircharge , to apply the Phreno-physioineter , 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 idiots , it would be a mercy to them and a safeguard to society to keep their dangerous hands _ from acting upon the hints of their basilar brains . We are not laughing at Mr . Bridges , bnt merely trying to apply his suggestions to some

    practical end . Palmer , lie tells us , had a shallow moral region , an excess of animal feelings , great perceptive acuteness , a low , cunning cleverness , but an almost total want of practical judgment . Compare his bead with that of Mr . Cornbe , 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 chiMhood , There "were positive organic defects in his brain , but we are not quite sure whether we und-erstand Mr . Bridges on this point . Could lie Jiave told , before examining the interior structure of Dove ' s head , whether that man ought not to have been , allowed , personal liberty and that he wus 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 remai-k of Mr . Bridges , that he would undertake , it' appointed inspector of penal settlements , to determine what criuiimils should , and what criminals should not . be allowed tickets of leave . " The

    tickct-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 with practical certainty . " Yet we can conceive some embarrassments arising from such an experiment . The convict , claiming conditional manumission , might produce certificates of good behaviour lor 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 he kept in irons ; it' you let him go you may become responsible for a murder . " It -would lie necessary to establish a very certain test before condemning men to life-long captivity on account of their basilar phreno-metricul " angles ot forty degrees . It may be true that this angle marked the brains of liarbour , Gleeson

    Wileon , Jackson , Waddington , Rush , and Picschi ; but do six esainplos supply ^ an infallible rule ? Greenacre , the-worst of murderers , and Mrfl . Gottfried , the worst of murderesses , had the worst ofbasihir phreno-pliysiooaetrical angles , says Mr . Bridges ; but from what he adds we are afraid lie would be rather a formidable agent in the hands of a continental cliief of police . Fieschi , ' lie remarks , was , from a basilnr point of view , " tlie tmo type of tlie murderer mid conspirator ; and I nm sorry to say that 1 have met with too many of this class who have talked largely of polici < : ; il rights and patriotism ; but I often found that notions of moral and p ¦ -lineal rights had a very dangerous range of action . " We hope Mr . Bri Igca has supplied no physio-phrenometcrs to the police of Paris or Vienna . He sums up . thua : —

    In the skull . of King Robert Bruce the baailur phren ' o-motrical angle 1 h 40 degroos ? in the skull of Burns tho poet it ia 25 degrees . I have met with diatinguiahed warriors and sportsmen in whom tho au ^ lo wan not more than 25 degreea , and they . had . gruat aversion to cruqlfcj ' . Tho ungl « in tlio cost taken from tho head of Napoleon aftor death is . 30 dogroua . Tho autjlo is ID do ^ ioos in Kuah , CHeoeon , tyilson , Robert IVlnrloy , Thurtell , l » attnbr , IWo , Harbour , ami Wtiidington , who waa « xocuted at York for murder at SlioiUold . It is 2 . "> do ^ i-. n'H in tho head of Mr . Gforgo GombOi Ecv . I > r . Kaflloa , Mr . JosopU Huinu , ( Jiiptuin t ' arry , J > r-Simrzhoim , and Dr . \ Eppa . Several of the rhUrdercra are pointed at as gluttons or epicures . Kush gave strict orders that he ' should be providod with a sucking-pig- und a | ) plesii ( icG during his trial ; Palmer's appetite ncVcr failed 'him ; to thu vory lust , liu was exceedingly au . xioiia ^ ubout his suppers . Jackaon , during the night bufore hid

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    978 THJB LIjADim ; _[ No ^ 941 , Qcipq ^ b 10 , 1857 .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 10, 1857, page 978, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2213/page/18/