66

gree. The original was left by Richard Cromwell, son of Oliver Cromwell, to his, Richard's, daughter Elizabeth. She left it to her cousins Richard and Thomas. Thomas bequeathed it to his daughters, Anne, Elizabeth, and Lucretia. From them it came to Oliver Cromwell in 1802, who left it to his daughter, Mrs. Russell, whose husband, an officer in the British Mint, presented it to the United States Cabinet in 1859."

Cromwell, according to the Commonwealth Mercury of November 23, 1658, was buried that day at the east end of the chapel of Henry Seventh, in Westminster Abbey. Dean Stanley accepted this as an established fact, notwithstanding the several reports, long current, that the body was thrown into the Thames, or laid in the field of Naseby, or carried to the vault of the Claypoles in the parish church of Northampton, or stolen during a heavy tempest in the night, or placed in the coffin of Charles First at Windsor, Mr. Samuel Pepys being responsible for the last wild statement. After the Restoration this same

OLIVER CROMWELL.

NAPOLEON III.

Mr. Pepys saw the disinterred head of Cromwell in the interior of Westminster Hall, although all the other authorities agree in stating that, with the heads of Ireton and Bradshaw, it adorned the outer walls of that building.

Both Horace Smith and Cyrus Redding, early in the present century, saw what they fully believed to be the bead of Cromwell. It was then in the possession of "a medical gentleman" in London. "The nostrils," said Redding, 66 were filled with a substance like cotton. The brain had been extracted by dividing the scalp. The membranes within were perfect, but dried up, and looked like parchment. The decapitation had evidently been performed after death, as the state of the flesh over the vertebræ of the neck plainly showed."

A correspondent of the London Times, signing himself "Senex," wrote to that journal, under date December 31, 1874, a full history of this head, in which he explained

66

that at the end of five-and-twenty years it was blown down one stormy night, and picked up by a sentry, whose family sold it to one of the Cambridgeshire Russells, who were the nearest living descendants of the Cromwells. By them it was sold, and was exhibited at several places in London. "Senex gave the following account of the recognition of the head by Flaxman, the sculptor. Well," said Flaxman, "I know a great deal about the configuration of the head of Oliver Cromwell. He had a low, broad forehead, large orbits to his eyes, a high septum to the nose, and high cheek-bones; but there is one feature which will be with me a crucial test, and that is that instead of having the lower jawbone somewhat curved, it was particularly short and straight, but set out at an angle, which gave him a jowlish appearance." The head," continued Senex," exactly answered to the description, and Flaxman went away expressing himself as convinced and delighted." Another, and an earlier, account, dated 1813, says that "the countenance has been compared by Mr. Flaxman, the statuary, with a plaster cast of Oliver's face taken after his death (of which there are several in London), and he [Flaxman] declares the features are perfectly similar."

66

66

Whether or not the body of the real Cromwell was dug up at the Restoration, and whether his own head or that of some other unfortunate was exposed on a spike to the fury of the elements for a quarter of a century on Westminster Hall, are questions which, perhaps, will never be decided. The head which Flaxman saw, as it is to be found engraved in contemporary prints, is not the head the cast of which is now in my possession, although it bears a certain resemblance thereto. Mine is probably "the cast from the face taken [immediately] after his death," of which, as we have seen, several copies were known to exist in Flaxman's time. It is, at all events, very like to the Cromwell who has been handed down to posterity by the limners and the statuaries of his own court. Thomas Carlyle was familiar with it, and believed in it. His copy of it is said to be in the possession of Harvard College; and he avowedly based upon it his famous picture of the Protector: "Big massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect; wart above the right eyebrow; nose

labor and endeavor: on the whole, a right noble lion-face and hero-face; and to me it was royal enough."

A copy of this mask in plaster is in the rooms of the National Portrait-Gallery, Great George Street, Westminster; and a wax mask, resembling it strongly, although not identical with it, is to be seen in the British Museum. This latter is broken in several places.

The mask of Henry IV., that darling King whose praises still the Frenchmen sing, has also a curious history. During the French Revolution, as is well known, the tombs of the Bourbons and the Valois at St. Denis were desecrated by the citizens of the republic. And when they began to "empty the rat-hole under the high altar," to use the words of one of their own leaders, the first coffin they came upon was that of Henry of Navarre. The body was discovered to have been careful

ly embalmed, and it was enveloped in a series of narrow bands of linen, steeped in some chemical preparation. The face was so well preserved that even the fanshaped beard seemed as if it had been but recently dressed. The upper part of the brain had been removed, and was replaced by a sponge filled with aromatic essences. Enormous crowds came from Paris to look upon what was left of the monarch who once wished that all his subjects might have capon for their Sunday dinners; and it is said that some one of them made this cast of his face, although it is much more natural to believe that it dates from Henry's death. It is, at all events, still a common object in the plaster shops of Paris; and, painted a dark green to match the lintel of his door, it serves to-day as a sign and a symbol for a dealer in plaster images who does business in one of the side streets near upper Broadway, New York.

Charles XII. of Sweden was a soldier and little else. He knew no such word as fear. He was haughty and inflexible. He never thought of consulting the happiness of his people. He ascended the throne of a nation rich, powerful, and happy; he died King of a country which was ruined, wretched, and defenceless. Whether or not he was killed by one of his own soldiers, history has never been able to determine. He was shot in the head at the siege of Frederickshald, in Norway, in 1718; and when his body was exhumed and examined, a hundred and fifty years later, "the centre of his forehead was found to be disfigured by a depression corresponding with a fracture of that part of the skull." The fatal missile had passed entirely through the King's head from left to right in a downward direction; and in the cast in my collection the indentures, particularly the larger one on the right temple, are clearly perceptible. An engraving of this death - mask, dated 1823, contains the legend that it was "made four hours after he was shot, and was taken from the original cast preserved in the University Library at Cambridge, by Angelica Clarke."

The copy of this cast in the British Museum is from the Christy collection. Mr. Henry Christy is known to have been in Stockholm at the time of the sale of the effects of Baestrom, the

Swedish sculptor, and he is believed to have purchased it then and there. It contains more of the top and back of the head than the cast here reproduced, and it bears, very unmistakably, evidences of the bullet wounds in the temples. This cast, the wax mask of Cromwell mentioned above, and a cast of the face of James II. of England, are the only things of the kind the British Museum possesses.

Lavater wrote with unbounded enthusiasm of the impression made upon him by the face of Frederick the Great, whom he once saw in life. "Of all the physiognomies I have ever examined," he said, "there is not a single one which bears so strongly as this does the impress of its high destiny. The forehead, which forms almost a straight and continued line with the nose, announces impatience against the human race, and communicates the expression of it to the cheeks and lips," etc. And Mr. Fowler, who knew Frederick only by his portraits, ascribed to him fine temperament, intense mentality, great clearness and sharpness of thought, with a tendency to scholarship, and especially to languages, and with immense acquisitiveness.

Carlyle wrote: "All next day the body [of Frederick] lay in state in the palace;

FREDERICK THE GREAT.

thousands crowding, from Berlin and the other environs, to see the face for the last time. Wasted, worn; but beautiful in death, with the thin gray hair parted into locks and slightly powdered. And at eight in the evening, Friday, 18th [of August, 1786], he was borne to the Garrison-kirche of Potsdam, and laid beside his father in the vault behind the pulpit there."

The original of this cast of Frederick the Great is in the Hohenzollern Museum in Berlin, and of course is authentic. My own copy I brought from Berlin some ten years ago, with the consent of the authorities of the Museum.

Concerning the personal appearance of General Grant, Mr. W. A. Purrington, of New York, thus writes in a private letter, which he has kindly permitted me to make public:

"When I first knew the General I was a school-boy, and of course felt the schoolboy's awe of a great man. Privileged to

know him for years in the intimacy of his own home, I never entirely overcame that feeling. What was heroic in him grew, and did not diminish. The more I saw of him the more I felt that he was good as well as great. His face used to be called sphinxlike. That was scarcely true, for although its expression was always calm, strong, imperturbable, it was also one of great gentleness. He surely was a gentleman. Perhaps his hands aided to keep his face serene, for we must all have some safetyvalve. Almost the only external indication of annoyance I ever noticed in him was a nervous opening and shutting of his fingers, an index of emotion often observed by other of his more intimate friends. A notable illustration of this trait was told me by a

gentleman who once accompanied him to a very large public dinner given in his honor. At its close one of the guests ventured upon the telling of stories which are not told pueris virginibusque. The General's fingers began to work; he quietly excused himself; and his companion, who knew the significance of the gesture, followed him. As they smoked their cigars on the streets of the foreign city in which this occurred, the General said, 'I hope I have not taken you from the table, but I have never permitted such conversation in my presence, and I never intend to.' This was not an affectation. His mind, clear and wholesome, left its imprint in his face. Grossness or scandal gave him genuine discomfort. He loved to think well of his kind. This trait showed in his face, gave it benignity, and was, I fancy, the secret of his hold on the affections of men. We chanced to be alone in his room one night after the last cruel betrayal of his confidence, he

walking to and fro by the aid of his crutch. Suddenly he stopped, and, as if following aloud the train of his silent thought, he said: 'I have made it a rule of my life to believe in a man long after others have given him up. I do not see how I can do so again.' There was no bitterness in his voice, not even an elevation of tone. It was simply an exclamation of an honest heart sorely wounded in its belief.

"As I recall his face, that which I remember is not so much line and contour as the expression of strength, of great patience, of calmness, and of gentleness; and the incidents which illustrate pure qualities also come back freshly to my memory.

"He had, too, a merry face; at times a merry eye. He was full of sly humor. The twinkling of his eye and his quiet laugh promptly rewarded an amusing story. In his own home his face was always kind and responsive. There he was not the silent man the world thought it knew, but a fluent and well-informed talker on all that was of interest to him. Undoubtedly, however, he had the gift of silence, and when he saw fit to exercise it his face became a mask, conversation ceased to be among the possibilities, and a chat with a graven image would have been a relief at such a time. He became then, and designedly, a silence-compeller. When there was nothing to be said, he said nothing."

Of General Sherman, General Porter said: "He was a many-sided man, who had run the entire gamut of human experience. He had been merchant, banker, lawyer, professor, traveller, author, doctor, president of a street railway, and soldier. Wherever he was placed, his individuality was conspicuous and pronounced. His methods were always ori

ginal, and even when unsuccessful they were entertaining. He could not have been commonplace if he had tried." There was certainly nothing commonplace in his personal appearance. His frame was tall and wiry; his hazel eyes were sharp and penetrating; his nose was aquiline; his beard was short and

U. S. GRANT.

crisp; his mouth was firm and tender; his bearing was courtly, unpretentious, and dignified. He was the typical soldier in appearance and action; like Grant, he was entirely devoid of any outward expression of vanity, self-esteem, or selfconsciousness. As he was one of the bravest, so was he one of the gentlest, kindest, most sympathetic of men. The mask of General Sherman was made immediately after his death, under the direction of Mr. St. Gaudens.