It is interesting to note the similarity of the merely emotional gestures and attitudes of modern Italy with those of the classics.  The Pulcinella, Fig. 73, for instance, drawn from life in the streets of Naples, has the same pliancy and abandon of the limbs as appears in the supposed foolish slaves of the Vatican Terence.

[Illustration:  Fig. 73.]

In close connection with this branch of the study reference must be made to the gestures exhibited in the works of Italian art only modern in comparison with the high antiquity of their predecessors.  A good instance is in the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci, painted toward the close of the fifteenth century, and to the figure of Judas as there portrayed.  The gospel denounces him as a thief, which is expressed in the painting by the hand extended and slightly curved; imitative of the pilferer’s act in clutching and drawing toward him furtively the stolen object, and is the same gesture that now indicates theft in Naples, Fig. 74, and among some of the North American Indians, Fig. 75.  The pictorial propriety of the sign is preserved by the apparent desire of the traitor to obtain the one white loaf of bread on the table (the remainder being of coarser quality) which lies near where his hand is tending.  Raffaelle was equally particular in his exhibition of gesture language, even unto the minutest detail of the arrangement of the fingers.  It is traditional that he sketched the Madonna’s hands for the Spasimo di Sicilia in eleven different positions before he was satisfied.

[Illustration:  Fig. 74.]

No allusion to the bibliography of gesture speech, however slight, should close without including the works of Mgr.  D. De Haerne, who has, as a member of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, in addition to his rank in the Roman Catholic Church, been active in promoting the cause of education in general, and especially that of the deaf and dumb.  His admirable treatise The Natural Language of Signs has been translated and is accessible to American readers in the American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb, 1875.  In that valuable serial, conducted by Prof.  E.A.  FAY, of the National Deaf Mute College at Washington, and now in its twenty-sixth volume, a large amount of the current literature on the subject indicated by its title can be found.

[Illustration:  Fig. 75.]

MODERN USE OF GESTURE SPEECH.

Dr. TYLOR says (Early History of Mankind, 44):  “We cannot lay down as a rule that gesticulation decreases as civilization advances, and say, for instance, that a Southern Frenchman, because his talk is illustrated with gestures as a book with pictures, is less civilized than a German or Englishman.”  This is true, and yet it is almost impossible for persons not accustomed to gestures to observe them without associating the idea of low culture.  Thus in Mr. Darwin’s