Of course, many emotions may share in the moulding of a nose, and the whole subject is too intricate and vast to be treated briefly.  I have only given a few examples to illustrate my argument, and my conclusion is that the key to the peculiar significance and personal quality of the nose is to be found in its immobility.  The eyes and lips are incessantly in motion, we can twitch and wrinkle the cheeks and forehead, and muscles to move the ears are there, though most men have lost control of them.  But the nose stands out like some bold promontory on a level coast, or like the Sphinx in the Egyptian desert, with an ancient history, no doubt, and a mystery perhaps, but without response to any appeal.  And for this very reason it is an index, not to that which is transient in the man, but to that which is permanent.  He may knit his brows to seem thoughtful and profound, or compress his lips to persuade his friends and himself that he has a strong will, but he can play no trick with his nose.  There it stands, an incorruptible witness, testifying to what he is, and not only to what he is, but to the rock whence he was hewn and to the pit whence he was digged.  For his nose is a bequest from his ancestors, an entailed estate which he cannot alienate.

V

EARS

Men and women have ears, and so have jugs and pitchers.  In the latter case they are useful:  jugs and pitchers are lifted by them.  And what is useful is fit, and fitness is the first condition of beauty.  But human ears are put to no use, except sometimes when naughty little boys are lifted by them in the way of discipline; and I can see no beauty in them.  It is only because they are so common that we do not notice how ridiculous they are.  In the days of Charles I. men sometimes had their ears cut off for holding wrong opinions, which would have made them famous and popular in these enlightened days, but at that time it made all right-thinking people despise them, so the fashion of going without ears did not spread among us.  If it had, then how differently we should all think of the matter now!  If we were all accustomed to neat, round heads at drawing-rooms, levees and balls, how repulsive it Would be to see a well-dressed man with two ridiculous, wrinkled appendages sticking out from the sides of his face!

In saying this I am not drawing on my fancy, but on my memory.  I can recollect the time when no gentleman, still less any lady, would have owned a terrier with its ears on.  And why go back so far?  The same sentiment is prevalent in good society with respect to men’s beards in this year of grace and smooth faces.  Yet, if one chance to be looking at a Rembrandt instead of at society, what an infinitely handsomer adjunct to a noble face is a fine beard than a pair of ears!