Some Famous Noses

How the Character Can Be Read by a Study of the Face — The Japanese Nose.

If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter the whole face of the earth would have been changed. — Pascal.

All physiognomists agree in attaching the greatest importance to the nose, which has been called by one of them “the sign post that points to the character,” and in reading your neighbor’s disposition through his face you may consider that, with the exception of the nose, the weakness of every other feature may be balanced and redeemed by the strength and force of another; thus a weak mouth is controlled, as it were, by a strong, firm chin, a weak chin by a broad intellectual forehead, and any or all features are in a way fortified by a strong, powerful nose. A noticeably small nose, however, is pronounced by all character readers from Lavater, the earliest of physiognomists, to the present day, as incompatible with any great moral, artistic or even physical accomplishment. Nosologists declare there are but three national noses — Roman or aquiline, Greek and Jewish; all others belong to the mixed classes and are known as angular, parrot-beak, bulbous, turned up and snub.

The Emperor Napoleon was a great believer in long noses and of his own accord never intrusted a matter of importance to a weak nosed man. “Give me,” he would say, “officers with noses; I will do the rest.” The Emperor himself had a perfect Roman nose, with a most beautifully modelled mouth and chin, the whole imparting wonderful strength, dignity and force.

Byron describes Julius Caesar as the black eyed Roman with the eagle’s beak.

The Duke of Wellington and George Washington had also Roman noses, as, indeed, had many famous commanders.

SOME FAMOUS NOSES.

In a company of men you may safely count on the Roman nosed for leading in times of emergency. Among the public Roman nosed men of our times are Evarts, Ambassador Bayard, Blaine, Lincoln, in politics, and in science it is to be noted that most of our great inventors are also endowed with generous noses, Romanesque in form. Frank Julian Sprague, one of the youngest of the great electricians, has the Roman nose, broad, forceful chin, typical of the man bound if he lives to accomplish stupendous feats in addition to past wonders. Tesla is of the same type. Chauncey Depew has a marked Roman nose, so has General Lew Wallace. Gladstone also in his youth had a clean cut Roman nose. It has thickened with his years, as the noses of all deeply thinking people do.

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