Now, Swift died in 1745, and may be said to have died to literature some years earlier. Silhouette’s cheese-paring economy was, we are told, induced by the deficit entailed “by the ruinous war of 1756,” consequently it could not have been before 1760 that his name would have become synonymous with cheapness. We thus have evidence that the art was in use at the least twenty years before his name could have been applied to it; and it does not at all appear that it was new then, as Mrs. Pyburg cut William and Mary’s portrait out of black paper in 1699. This nomenclature must, therefore, have been caused by his adoption of it as a pastime, and not by the reason given by I. D’Israeli and the _Dict. Hist._ This is an instance of how easily false derivations may be published even within so short a time of the events for which they profess to account. A very slight study of silhouettes shows how characteristic is the pose of many of the old black profile portraits. In the shadow of George III., do we not see the embodiment of Lord Rosebery’s inimitable description, “the German Princelet of his day,” and in Pitt’s silhouette, with its “damned long, obstinate upper lip,” as his royal master so vigorously described it, there is the very ego of the man who was premier at twenty-five. Goëthe’s letters to his mother are full of allusions to the novel portraiture which had been brought to his notice by Lavater, the Zürich divine, whose essay on Physiognomy, written for the promotion of the knowledge and love of mankind, is still read in Germany. The edition of 1794 is before us, and shows hundreds of silhouette drawings, for he wrote of the importance of reading character from people’s faces, and used the silhouette for this purpose. Thus the shadow portrait, once the amusement of amateurs, now began to have scientific significance. Goëthe testifies that Lavater wished all the world to co-operate with him, and he arrived at Goëthe’s house on June 23rd, 1774, not only to take portraits of the young genius, but also of his parents. A year later Goëthe implores Lavater in a letter, “I beg you will destroy the family picture of us; it is frightful. You do credit neither to yourself nor us. Get my father’s cut out and use him as a vignette, for he is good. You can do what you like with my head too, but my mother must not stand there like that!” An amusing sequel to this is that when, in the third volume of the “Physiognomy,” the councillor’s portrait appeared, but not that of Goëthe’s mother, she was much annoyed, and said that Lavater evidently did not think her face worthy to appear. The matter rankled, for in 1807 she had her head examined by Dr. Gall, “to find out if the great qualities of her son had, by any chance, been passed on to her.”