Nay, it is an added grandeur.
A nose to the whale would have been impertinent.
As on your physiognomical voyage you sail round his vast head
in your jollyboat, your noble conceptions of him are never
insulted by the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled.
A pestilent conceit, which so often will insist upon obtruding
even when beholding the mightiest royal beadle on his throne.
In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view
to be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of his head.
This aspect is sublime.
In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with
the morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bull
has a touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles,
the elephant's brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical
brow is as that great golden seal affixed by the German Emperors
to their decrees. It signifies--"God: done this day by my hand."
But in most creatures, nay in man himself, very often the brow
is but a mere strip of alpine land lying along the snow line.
Few are the foreheads which like Shakespeare's or Melancthon's rise
so high, and descend so low, that the eyes themselves seem clear, eternal,
tideless mountain lakes; and all above them in the forehead's wrinkles,
you seem to track the antlered thoughts descending there to drink,
as the Highland hunters track the snow prints of the deer.
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