SOURCE: Curtis, L. Perry, Jr. “Physiognomy: Ancient and Modern.” In Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature, pp. 1-15. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Curtis discusses the role of physiognomy in shaping cultural beliefs about the Irish in Victorian England. Physiognomy was applied in nineteenth-century novels and graphic satire, and its semi-scientific nature appeared to lend credibility to English beliefs about the mental and moral inferiority of the Irish.

In the year 1880 Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912), the Belgian political economist and radical essayist, published a series of epistolary articles on the condition of Ireland in the Journal des Débats. Molinari's survey of the Irish scene may not have equaled Gustave de Beaumont's notable inquiry of the 1830s in breadth of knowledge and depth of insight, but there was one passage in his appraisal of Anglo-Irish relations which shows him to have been...