Professor Lombroso tells us that his mother, who had always lived far from the world, was twice able to discover the criminal character of young people whom as yet no one had suspected. A more curious example, he goes on to remark, occurred in connection with the murderer Francesconi. There was nothing remarkable about him, nothing to indicate ferocity or a temper unlike that of other people; his beard was abundant and forehead high; one just perceived a slight degree of prognathism and some prominence of the frontal eminences. Yet years before his crime, a young girl of sixteen (afterwards the Countess della Rocca), who had never quitted the paternal home, and had no experience of life, refused to speak to him when every one welcomed him on account of his wit. When asked why she treated him as though he were a scoundrel, she replied: “If he is not a murderer he will become one.” When Lombroso afterwards asked her by what sign she was guided to this too speedily verified prophecy, she replied: “By his eyes.” Lombroso once asked an intelligent schoolmistress to submit to thirty-two young girls twenty portraits of thieves and twenty of great men. Eighty per cent. of these children recognised the first as bad people, the second as good. On another occasion he showed two hundred photographs of youths to three medical men, and they all selected one as of the criminal type; a little girl of twelve also selected the same. This youth had never appeared in a court of justice, but he had cruelly betrayed those who had assisted him to obtain a good position in life. He was not legally a criminal, but, as Lombroso remarks, he was so anthropologically. Beautiful faces, it is well known, are rarely found among criminals. The prejudice against the ugly and also against the deformed is not without sound foundation. What Hepworth Dixon wrote in 1850 on this point is still of general application in all civilised countries:--“The population of Millbank is always numerous and always changing; but its character remains substantially the same. Year after year the visitor might drop in and see no difference. There is a certain monotony and family likeness in the criminal countenance which is at once repulsive and interesting. No person can be long in the habit of seeing masses of criminals together without being struck with the sameness of their appearance. A handsome face is a thing rarely seen in a prison; and never in a person who has been a law-breaker from childhood. Well-formed heads, round and massive, denoting intellectual power, may be seen occasionally, but a pleasing, well-formed face, never.”