of the physiognomy every portion of the face performs a separate part.  Thus, for instance, it is not useless to know what function nature has assigned to the eye, the nose, the mouth, in the expression of certain emotions of the soul.  True passion, which never errs, has no need of recurring to such studies; but they are indispensable to the feigned passion of the actor.  How useful would it not be to the actor who wishes to represent madness or wrath, to know that the eye never expresses the sentiment experienced, but simply indicates the object of this sentiment!  Cover the lower part of your face with your hand, and impart to your look all the energy of which it is susceptible, still it will be impossible for the most sagacious observer to discover whether your look expresses anger or attention.  On the other hand, uncover the lower part of the face, and if the nostrils are dilated, if the contracted lips are drawn up, there is no doubt that anger is written on your countenance.  An observation which confirms the purely indicative part performed by the eye is, that among raving madmen the lower part of the face is violently contracted, while the vague and uncertain look shows clearly that their fury has no object.  It is easy to conceive what a wonderful interest the actor, painter, or sculptor must find in the study of the human body thus analysed from head to foot in its innumerable ways of expression.  Hence, the eloquent secrets of pantomime, those imperceptible movements of great actors which produce such powerful impressions, are decomposed and subjected to laws whose evidence and simplicity are a twofold source of admiration.

“Finally, in what concerns articulate language M. Delsarte has assumed a yet more novel task.  We all know the power of certain inflections; we know that a phrase which accented in a certain way is null, accented in another way produces irresistible effects upon the stage.  It is the property of great artists to discover this preeminent accentuation; but never, to my knowledge, did anyone think of referring these happy inspirations of genius to positive laws.  Yet, whence comes it that a certain inflection, a certain word placed in relief, affects us?  How shall we explain this emotion, if not by a certain relation existing between the laws of our organization, the laws of general grammar, and those of musical inflection?  There is always, in a phrase loudly enunciated, one word which sustains the passionate accent.  But how shall we detach and recognize it in the midst of the phrase?  How distribute the forces of accentuation on all the words of which it is composed?  How classify and arrange them in relation to that sympathetic inflection, without which the most energetic thought halts at our intelligence without reaching our heart?  M. Delsarte has had recourse to the same method which guided him in the study of gesture.  He did not study declamation on the stage, but in real life, where unpremeditated inflections spring directly from feeling; then, fortified by innumerable observations, he rearranged grammar and rhetoric from this special point of view, and has obtained results as simple in their principles as they are fertile in their application.