It has often struck me as a defect in our anatomical teachers, that in describing that prominent feature of the human face, the organ of scent, they generalize too much, and have but one term for the symmetrical arch, arising majestically, or the tiny atom, scarcely equal to the weight of a barnacle--a very dot of flesh! Nor is the dissimilarity between the invisible functions of the organ, and the visible varieties of its external structure, less worthy of remark. With some, the sense of smelling is so dull, as not to distinguish hyacinths from assafoetida; they would even pass the Small-Pox Hospital, and Maiden-lane, without noticing the knackers; whilst others, detecting instantly the slightest particle of offensive matter, hurry past the apothecaries, and get into an agony of sternutation, at fifty yards from Fribourg's. Shakspeare, who was a minute observer of the anatomical and physiological varieties of the human frame, did not allow this dissimilarity to pass unnoticed; and, moreover, he starts a query that has never been satisfactorily answered, from his time to the present; viz. "Canst thou tell why one's nose stands i' the middle of one's face?"[4] And his nice discrimination about noses extends also to shape and colour.--from the "Red-nosed innkeeper of Dav'ntry,"[5] and the "Malmsy-nosed knave, Bardolph,"[6] to him in Henry V., "whose nose was sharp as a pen!" [4] Lear. [5] 1 Henry IV. iv. 2. [6] 2 Henry IV. ii. 1. This celebrated "Malmsy-nose" possessed properties unknown to the same feature now-a-days. It was adapted to practical utility, in its application to domestic purposes, and moral instruction, by that great admirer and competent judge of its virtues, Sir John Falstaff, to whose sheets it did the office of a warming-pan;[7] and who made as good use of it as some men do of a death's head, or a _memento mori:_ "I never see it," said he, "but I think upon hell fire." It stands almost unrivalled in history, and ranks at least with that which gave a cognomen to Ovid,[8] and the one to which the celebrated violoncello player, Cervetto, owed the _sobriquet_ of _Nosey_. This epithet reminds me of another nose of theatrical notoriety, whose rubicund tint, when it interfered with the costume of a sober character which its owner was enacting, was moderated by his wife, who, with laudable anxiety to keep down its "rosy hue," was constantly behind the scenes with a powder puff, which she was accustomed to apply, ejaculating, "'Od rot it, George! how you do rub your poor nose! Come here, and let me powder it. Do you think Alexander the Great had such a nose?" [7] Henry V. ii. 1. [8] "Ovidius Naso was the man: and why, indeed, Naso; but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy?" says Holofernes, the school-master, in Love's Labour Lost.