Nevertheless, the world owes much to Boswell’s imbecility. His mind was a _tabula rasa_, on which were written down for our edification the sayings of a great sage, pure and unalloyed, but which, if transmitted through a mind of greater capacity, would have lost much of their truthfulness and fidelity. MURAT presents an instance of an illustrious Snub. But it is notorious that Murat was never anything but a tool in the hands of Napoleon. He was quite incompetent to stand alone. He was a peacock’s feather in the hands of a juggler—veering with the directive motion and breath of the skilful balancer. Where he was laid, there he lay; where he was set up, there he stood. Such men were very needful to Napoleon. They were his best puppet-kings, by which he hoped to govern Europe. Sometimes he made a mistake, as in Bernadotte and his brother Louis; but Murat and Joseph were most skilfully selected to obey his ambitious impulses. Perhaps—as he is said to have chosen able men for their long noses—he selected these for their Snubs. Murat especially rejoiced in a most egregious Snub, and certainly exhibited no mental qualifications to belie the inference to be drawn from that form of Nose. It is an important and very obvious corroboration of the truth of Nasology, that the noses of children are generally Snub or Celestial. This arises from their minds being unformed, and their characters undeveloped. As they grow up, their minds gradually expand, their characters assume individuality; and, coincident therewith, their Noses acquire the formation expressive of their mental tendencies. In little children, Snub or Celestial Noses are beautiful, because they are congruous with our ideas of the ductility and gentleness of childhood. A child with a great Roman nose projecting from its rounded cheeks and innocent eyes, would be an ugly child, though every feature were individually perfect, because its nose would bespeak a force and independence of mind which are revolting in a little child. As we should recoil from a child which endeavoured to entertain us with discourse suitable to a man of mature years, instead of with innocent prattle, so we instinctively dislike in a child the features belonging to manhood. The beautiful harmony which reigns throughout all the works of Nature, is in nothing more manifest than in the congruity between the mind and the features, especially in characterizing infantile and undeveloped minds by infantile and undeveloped features.