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HOW TO GET STRONG

back of his head.^[1] From his parents he had every advantage of heredity and environment from youth up. Over the mantel-piece in his bedroom there is emblazoned a text which explains a good deal of the tranquillity which has saved Mr. Gladstone from nervous exhaustion. The text runs: 'Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.' Mr. Gladstone's simple but fervent religious faith is the first element of the secret of his continued and continuing vigor; the second place must be awarded to the happy influence of a fortunate marriage. Mrs. Gladstone held the view that it was the wife's duty to make

↑ If a great back-head thus means "enormous driving-power and physical energy," there is a rich field for study in the heads of the very men referred to in this chapter; for, judging from the best statues, models, portraits, and descriptions of them extant, Socrates, Plato, Alexander, Demosthenes, Hannibal, Charlemagne, Wallace, Luther, Cromwell, Peter the Great, O'Connell, Chalmers, Goethe, Wellington, Napoleon, Franklin, Washington, Webster, Beecher, Spurgeon, Bismarck—indeed nearly every one of all these mighty men; and, if the marble busts in the Astor Library in New York are correct, Solon, Seneca, Pompey, Alcibiades, Themistocles, Antony, nearly all men of but moderate forehead, had enormous back-heads; while the calipers show the back-head of Julius Cæsar to have been simply colossal—the largest diameter just above and back of the ears, to be twice as great as that of the forehead; and the Farnese bust of him in the Museum at Naples has a back-head of a breadth absolutely phenomenal; while as to Bismarck, as seen on page 362, a Berlin hatter once related, as the result of his phrenological experience, that "of all German tribes the Mecklenburgers had the biggest heads; but that no Mecklenburger ever required so large a hat as the Lord of Varzin." And Professor Fritz Schaper, of Berlin, the sculptor who has modelled the Chancellor's bust according to accurate measurements taken, says that "the head of Bismarck is mainly remarkable for its rugged bulk and strength, and for its abnormal breadth above the ears."

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[1] If a great back-head thus means "enormous driving-power and physical energy," there is a rich field for study in the heads of the very men referred to in this chapter; for, judging from the best statues, models, portraits, and descriptions of them extant, Socrates, Plato, Alexander, Demosthenes, Hannibal, Charlemagne, Wallace, Luther, Cromwell, Peter the Great, O'Connell, Chalmers, Goethe, Wellington, Napoleon, Franklin, Washington, Webster, Beecher, Spurgeon, Bismarck—indeed nearly every one of all these mighty men; and, if the marble busts in the Astor Library in New York are correct, Solon, Seneca, Pompey, Alcibiades, Themistocles, Antony, nearly all men of but moderate forehead, had enormous back-heads; while the calipers show the back-head of Julius Cæsar to have been simply colossal—the largest diameter just above and back of the ears, to be twice as great as that of the forehead; and the Farnese bust of him in the Museum at Naples has a back-head of a breadth absolutely phenomenal; while as to Bismarck, as seen on page 362, a Berlin hatter once related, as the result of his phrenological experience, that "of all German tribes the Mecklenburgers had the biggest heads; but that no Mecklenburger ever required so large a hat as the Lord of Varzin." And Professor Fritz Schaper, of Berlin, the sculptor who has modelled the Chancellor's bust according to accurate measurements taken, says that "the head of Bismarck is mainly remarkable for its rugged bulk and strength, and for its abnormal breadth above the ears."

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