'The low forehead of the Kabyle and Koord,' thought Lancelot, 'is compensated by the grim sharp lip, and glittering eye, which prove that all the small capabilities of the man have been called out into clear and vigorous action: but here the very features themselves, both by what they have and what they want, testify against that society which carelessly wastes her most precious wealth, the manhood of her masses! Tregarva! you have observed a good many things--did you ever observe whether the men with the large foreheads were better than the men with the small ones ?' 'Ay, sir, I know what you are driving at.

I've heard of that new- fangled notion of scholars, which, if you'll forgive my plain speaking, expects man's brains to do the work of God's grace.' 'But what have you remarked ?' 'All I ever saw was, that the stupid-looking ones were the greatest blackguards, and the clever-looking ones the greatest rogues.' Lancelot was rebuked, but not surprised.

He had been for some time past suspecting, from the bitter experience of his own heart, the favourite modern theory which revives the Neo-Platonism of Alexandria, by making intellect synonymous with virtue, and then jumbling, like poor bewildered Proclus, the 'physical understanding' of the brain with the pure 'intellect' of the spirit.
'You'll see something, if you look round, sir, a great deal easier to explain--and, I should have thought, a great deal easier to cure- -than want of wits.' 'And what is that ?' 'How different-looking the young ones are from their fathers, and still more from their grandfathers! Look at those three or four old grammers talking together there.

For all their being shrunk with age and weather, you won't see such fine-grown men anywhere else in this booth.' It was too true.

Lancelot recollected now having remarked it before when at church; and having wondered why almost all the youths were so much smaller, clumsier, lower-brained, and weaker-jawed than their elders.
'Why is it, Tregarva ?' 'Worse food, worse lodging, worse nursing--and, I'm sore afraid, worse blood.