Dec. 26, 1868.] WOMEN'S FACES. freaks of idealism committed by him are too prodigious to form the topic of an intentionally sane essay. The odd criticisms which men WITHOUT its quaint prejudices and who are not in love pronounce on the faces of delicious prepossessions, without its foolish impulses and illogical likings, without its comic contradictions and absurd idealisms, human nature would be a dull and stupid blunder. The worst type of man is he whose actions you can always predict. A man without an obvious weakness is a dangerous character. And yet there are such men-men whose notion of heaven is that of a sort of translated Carlsruhe, with very straight streets converging to an accurate geometric centre. Cold as a jelly-fish, with no more human sympathy than a cat, moving as mechanically as a hydraulic engine, such men pass through life in an orderly and precise manner, filling respectably the office in church or state to which they have been called, leaving the world in front of a fashionable funeral, and commemorated by a prim monument which does not mention their failings, for they never had any. These are the men whose criticism of a | woman's face may be depended upon for its superficial accuracy. The odd blunders which ordinary men make in judging and speaking of women's faces are very amusing. The scientific spirit, which ought to approach cautiously a careful definition, sets to capering and dancing like a harlequin, and finally flies off into the pure empyrean of idealism. Bold scrutiny of a profile gets transfixed by a glance from a pair of eyes, and dangles helplessly there, like a scarecrow in the rain. We have all noticed the absurd transition in the look of a man who has inspired laughing gas, when, advancing with a prodigious and pugnacious frown on his face, he suddenly bursts into an idiotic giggle, and stands puzzled by his own sense of the humorous. That is the ridiculous plight in which criticism suddenly finds itself when about to scan a pretty woman's face. Indeed, it may be safely affirmed that no man (except he be of the jelly-fish order) can perceive that a woman who has a wonderful pair of eyes and a wonderful smile has also an awkwardly bent nose. Were he to take her photograph, and trace with a pencil the outline of the face, his reason might compel him to acknowledge that, certainly, the nose was not quite straight. Another reference to the original, however, and lo! he has no more power of artistic scansion than the shepherd who first saw the face of Aphrodite burst laughing through the white froth of the sea. In this matter, love is out of court. The | the women whom they meet are, without any extraneous help, sufficiently curious. There can be no doubt of the fact that what might be supposed to be the chief criterion-accuracy of outline-is held to be of very secondary importance indeed. The grand protest of Mediævalism and even of the Renaissance against the tyranny of the unapproachable antique types affected at least this one good in our notions of the human face-it gave value to individualism, and freedom to the choice of art. Henceforth there were no supreme forms, to approach which all the specialities of individual portraiture had to be smoothed away. Prominence and proper appreciation were given to specific characteristics; and the human face, with its infinite varieties of form and expression, with its innumerable artistic graces, was made a law unto itself. This tendency to recognise the beauty and artistic fitness of actual forms, in preference to a slavish obedience to certain sublimated "universals," was but the reflex of a sentiment which has run through, in many directions, all our modern life. Men no longer sigh for the perfectly beautiful woman. Regularity of the most faultless kind in physical form is held to be of lesser account than those variations which are supposed, rightly or wrongly, to indicate special emotional or intellectual characteristics. When a man thinks over the beautiful women whom he knows-that is to say, the women whose profile is correct, whose head and figure are admirably in accordance with artistic types-does he not invariably find that the handsomest women are also the dullest? Does he not in trying to decide which is really the most beautiful woman of his acquaintance, choose out her whose irregularities of feature are lost in the movement and light of the face, in the glow and colour of the eyes, in preference to the woman of cold and formal accuracy of outline? It may be said that we are begging the question in assuming that women of classic regularity of features generally expressionless and formal; but we demand the premise on the ground of common experience. Somehow or other, the women whose life and grace of face are remarkable-so remarkable as instantly to attract and fascinate-almost never approach either the ancient or modern types of beauty. We do not at all mean to echo the vulgar belief that pretty women are invariably stupid. We leave mental qualities for the moment out of the question. The dulness of which we speak is not the dulness of mental vacuity; but that of conventional form. If you were to take one of the women out of the pages of Le Follet, and give her twenty times the genius of George Eliot, she would still look a fool. No power of brain could conquer the simpering stolidity of the perfectly regular face. Yet if pressed for an answer as to what they consider the perfect type of modern beauty, most men would think of one of these women in a book of fashions. There are the clear outlines of nose, mouth, and chin; the smooth high forehead, the small ear, the rounded cheek, and the accurately placed eyes. It is given to some men to know one or two women of this stamp in private life. Sometimes these outwardly angelic creatures are fools; sometimes, though rarely, they have mental qualities considerably above the average. In either case the result is the same. A man suddenly confronted by such a face, admires it; he is not moved by any instantaneous sympathy towards it. Perfectly beautiful women (there are not many of them, even if we accept the low type mentioned above) are much caressed by society. They adorn dinner-tables; are magnificent at balls; and make good matches. But they do not break hearts; and the memory of their face, tortured with parting or glowing with the quick joy of meeting, does not haunt a man's life. Intellectual graces do certainly add to the chances of a face being beautiful; and, without intellectual graces, the most charming face can never be quite satisfactory. Emotional variety and expression, however, is the true key to the inexplicable influence of the most irregular faces-a key which suggests considerations as to the origin of this free emotional display which cannot be entered upon here. The possibilities of tragedy and comedy which lie in some women's eyes are sufficient to make the face strongly and strangely suggestive-you know that with the slightest application of the proper touch, the whole mine of concealed emotion would fly up. Even the suggestion of a fierce temper (as a brief artistic study, be it understood) is better than the helpless dulness of the faultless and inexpressive face. Not unfrequently this indication of a fiery temperament lies in the eyes of a face which is otherwise unutterably soft and dove-like. In such a case the piquante contradiction is irresistibly charming if the woman be tender, and fragile, and [Dec. 26, 1863. winning, with a discreet and delicious veil of mildness tempering the powerful eyes. Such a woman invariably lends herself to any passing mood with an abandon which is either wonderfully seductive and confiding or repellant and terrible. She is either affectionate with a sort of kitten-like, tantalising playfulness, or she is a revengeful Juno with eyes of anger and words of sharp fire. There are other faces which express powerful emotion under powerful restraint—with all its suggestions of strong, enduring constancy and irreproachable delicacy of conscience. There are others that only speak of emotional weakness As of a certain infantine want of principle, joined to a want of will, and a prevailing misapprehension of surrounding relations chiefly arising out of vanity. We may most easily find types of such women in fiction, although they are common among us. a representative of the last named section take Hetty Sorel; of the previous class take Nina Balatka-surely one of the most perfect figures ever conceived by a novelist; and for the first Cleopatra may be taken as the one perennial type. The list might be indefinitely expanded. It is this suggestion of emotional power which gives the wonderful glamour to faces which are far from being strictly beautiful. Who is to define it, or mark its limits? No two men are affected in the same way by the same face; because it depends on themselves to seize the full suggestiveness of the face-to catch the stray lights of the features-and construct unspeakable sympathies out of the raw material of features. The man who pronounces a woman plain or beautiful according to certain canons of form is either a hypocrite, a pedant, or a donkey. A face is beautiful in proportion as it says something to you which you are desirous of hearing. Different men have different methods of hearing; and there are some to whom only the coarse message of health-conveyed in fresh colour and plump cheek-is intelligible. There are others, to whom such a face is blank and meaningless, who are willing to give away their life to win a smile from a certain pair of eyes, even although the eyes are green. Of course it is easy to see that a man with strong powers of idealism will construct a beautiful face out of unpromising materials; but this is not to the point. What face is that which appeals to the sense of beauty of the majority of men? Not the plump inanity of the coloured lithograph. Not the buxom country lass, who has all the beauties of which poets sing, but whom poets do not marry. Not the pinky doll of the book of fashions. Men love long eyelashes, because they seem to hide a secret. Men love those eyes which are transparent and yet deep, because there lies in them something of the unknown and the discoverable; and so men love faces that tell stories, and are coy, confiding, tantalising, with vague and grand emotional possibilities hidden somewhere about their expression. We have not said a word about the desirability of marrying a woman with one of these tantalising faces, nor of the desirability of marrying a woman with a pretty face at all. It is almost impossible to touch upon this branch of the subject without repeating the commonest of commonplaces. This may be said, however-a plain woman who has a cultivated brain, and good taste, ought always to be able to hold her ground against pretty women. Emotional variety has so much narrower limits than intellectual variety. You can run over the gamut of a woman's loves and hates much sooner than you can measure the circle of a cultivated intellectual sympathy; and, once you have exhausted the possible chords, their repetition is likely to become a trifle wearisome. With good taste, come the charms of artistic dress, pleasant, fresh, amusing conversation, and a graceful manner, which does far more execution than the victims of it imagine. Through her intellectual sympathies a woman enlarges the horizon of her life, borrows a new lustre for her own use, and gets the credit of all the wit, and grace, and brilliancy which her extended vision embraces. IT LA RUE DE JERUSALEM. T appears that, according to the last official police returns, the number of thieves, tramps, prostitutes in league with malefactors, professional swindlers and suspected rogues. that infest the towns of England and Wales, alone amounts to 141,000; of whom 26,000 only are in prison, and the rest roaming about at large. To cope with this predatory army we keep up a police force of about 24,000 men, which costs us £2,000,000 a year, and a collection of jails, penitentiaries, and reformatories, for which we are taxed to the extent of a million more. This makes a total of three millions. But as the number of criminals under lock and key is not one fifth of the number at liberty, we must compute how much the 115,000 malefactors, who are going about unhindered, cost us; and if we fix the estimate at the lowest average sum upon which a man can manage to live, viz., about £25 a head per annum, we arrive at a reckoning of £2,875,000 which represents the smallest valuation of the property stolen in our country during the course of a twelvemonth. To these figures we might add a pretty column of statistics as to the number of cracked heads, smashed faces, and ribs broken in by hob-nailed boots, which society pays as a tribute, over and above its pecuniary losses, to the pugnacious instincts of our native brigands. But this would be interpreted into sensational pleading. It is one of the most happy characteristics of our eminently practical English spirit, that we like to see everything reduced, in a business-like way, to a question of pounds and shillings. Arguments penned in blood often leave us indifferent; reasons urged in gold, never. Therefore, once again, there exists in the British isles a desperate host of 141,000 men, having no other trade but theft, no other occupation but violence. These scamps cost us at the lowest computation, five millions sterling a year. They are a terror to the kingdom. They swarm in our cities. They lie in wait for us in our streets. Whether as burglars, garrotters, pickpockets, or roughs, they are a source of constant vexation, intimidation, and annoyance to us. Indoors, the fear of their nightly prowlings will hardly allow us to sleep; out of doors they have become such a pestilent nuisance that we talk of it as a providential fact when we can come out of a crowd unharmed by them. Furthermore, they are not as one might suppose, a mysterious brotherhood like that of the carbonari whose members are unknown to the community and consequently unseizable. There is nothing secret about them. They ply their avocations under the very nose of the police. They are so well known to Scotland Yard that, were the authorities thus minded, they could easily compile a sort of thieves' directory, setting forth the names, addresses, ordinary business, and judicial antecedents of perhaps a hundred thousand of them. And this being so, we should like to ask what is the reason of our inexplicable listlessness in the matter; since the evil is so patent and crying, why do we not suppress it? Well, that is the question. We do not suppress it, because with all our vaunted shrewdness and love of order we are as blundering and routine-ridden a people as any existing on the face of the globe. We have such a stupid veneration for old, mouldy, and worn-out institutions, that we allow them to stand until they crumble about our ears into a heap of disreputable ruins. We are so thoroughly averse to reform in every shape, that we tolerate the most vexatious nuisances until they fester into plagues, and then, when forced to act at last, we do so in the same sort of spirit in which a pig takes killing-because we cannot help ourselves. A few years ago, when London had become about as safe a place to walk about in as the mountains of the Abruzzi, Parliament opened its eyes one night to the incontestable fact that Her Majesty's lieges were being choked at nightfall in a way that did no credit to civilization. A few half-hearted and shillyshallying measures were passed. A dozen or so of garrotters were whipped, very much to the dissatisfaction of a large class of philanthropists, and after a while things fell into the old groove again; the only difference being, that whereas in the first instance garrotters went about with their faces bare, they took from that moment to wearing masks; a change which added considerably to the romance of the thing, but very little to the facility of identification. Now in considering the real peril in which we stand by reason of the alarming spread of crime and its comparative impunity, cannot we be persuaded for once in our lives to take example of our neighbours and see how the criminal classes are dealt with abroad? When a friend has cured himself of a disease from which we are suffering, we make no difficulty about asking him for his recipe. We have headed this paper "La Rue de Jerusalem," which is the name of the street corresponding in French parlance to Scotland Yard; and if we would know how it is that professional theft is so much less prevalent in France than in England, why it is that we hear so much less of pauperism, vagabondage and ruffianism on the other side of the channel than on this, and why it is that the streets of Paris are so safe and orderly when compared to ours, it is to this Rue de Jerusalem that we must come for the secret. each arrondissement is divided into quarters (quartiers), having every one of them a policeoffice presided over by a commissaire and his deputy. To each office is attached from a hundred to a hundred and twenty policemen (sergents de ville), and a certain number of detectives, varying according to the nature of the quarter and the occasional requirements of the service. The eighty commissaires and their adjoints are all responsible to the Prefect of Police, who holds his seat at the Prefecture in the Rue de Jerusalem. Whenever an individual, native or foreign, hires apartments in an hotel or private house in Paris, he is asked to fill up a paper stating his name, age, birthplace, profession, or means of existence. The same thing is asked of any man hiring a house all to himself, or making a change of residence. Within three days of the arrival of the lodger, the landlord of the hotel or apartment is bound to notify the fact to the commissaire, who immediately forwards the bulletin d'arrivé to the Prefecture of Police. Here the name, profession, &c., of the stranger are inscribed in a ledger, along with any additional remarks which the landlord may have made upon him. For instance, if he have no passport, if his linen be marked with a different name to that which he has given, if there be anything mysterious or suspicious in his appearance, all this is noted down. It was in this way that the GrecoTrabuco conspiracy was discovered in 1864. Greco had been eating more sumptuous dinners than his means seemed to warrant ; moreover, he had received a few visits from some very ill-looking fellow-countrymen of his. Upon hearing this, the commissaire of the quarter set a watch upon him, and this timely prudence was probably instrumental in preventing another attempt like that of Orsini's. Upon the departure of travellers the same formalities are observed as upon arrival; a bulletin de départ is forwarded first to the district office, and thence to the central office, By this means the police authorities are informed of the goings and comings of all the strangers who visit Paris, and are able to exercise an occult supervision upon any gentleman who may change his hotel too often for illicit purposes. It has often surprised British swindlers, ill conversant with the French mode of doing business, to find with what unerring certainty they were tracked and arrested. When a foreigner departs from a French hotel without paying his bill, or carry Paris, which numbers as nearly as possible two millions of inhabitants, is divided into twenty municipalities (arrondissements) having each a mayor, an adjoint, and a council. All that relates to paving, lighting, repairing of roads, water supplies, local rating, registering of births, deaths, and marriages, and poor relief, falls within the province of these mayors, who are responsible to the Prefect of the Seine -a sort of permanent lord-mayor and lord-ing with him a few silver forks by way of melieutenant rolled into one. For police purposes mentoes, the fact is known at the Prefecture |