Calves' heads and brains, or, A phrenological lecture [graphic]

"A phrenologist, ugly and dandified, standing behind a table, lectures to an informally grouped and stupid-looking audience; he holds his naturalistic brown wig, revealing a bald head covered with reddened protuberances. His Concluding Address is engraved in the lower margin: Ladies and Gentlemen Having thus concluded the hundred and thirty ninth article, under the Head or Section of Propensities: I shall take my leave until the next lecture, by clearly elucidating in my own person an instance of Due Proportion of Faculties: Talkativeness with Gulling, standing First: and further beg to testify, beyond all doubt, . . . that on the Craniums of this highly gifted and scientific Audience, the Organ of Implicit faith Under Evident Contradictions, Stands beautifully develop'd to a Surprising and Prominent degree Dear Ladies Worthy Gentlemen; adieu. Nearest the lecturer is a family party: anxious wife, amused husband, and small boy with a head abnormally protuberant at the back. Two bald men anxiously feel their bumps; an agitated woman presses her forehead. A man inspects a skull. On the lecturer's table, with one of Gall's plaster heads mapped out in numbered compartments, are writing materials and books, two with titles: Treatise on Elementary and Logic. Portrait busts, all bald, stand on the floor; busts illustrating different propensities decorate the room. Two are placed conspicuously on the floor in front of the table, Dr. [sic] Ville [see British Museum Satires No. 15157] and Gall. Others are of Spurzhim [sic], Scott, Shakespeare, W. Clive, and Tremaine. Two of a group of skulls are inscribed Thirtell [Thurtell, the murderer, executed 1824] and Pollard. The busts featuring character (with appropriate expressions) are Gazing Faculty, Slyness, Pride, Sleepiness, Consequence. The book-case behind the lecturer contains, besides books, a skull and a large jar of coloured liquid inscribed Gall, it stands on a large book, Opinions on Men and things; beside this are Lock on Understanding and Aristotle (propped by a skull). The other books with titles are Moore, Lavater [two volumes], Lectures on Nothing [? Outinian Lectures, see British Museum Satires No. 14773]; a rolled document, Doctrino Particularum, lies on two large books: Self Knowledge and Commentana Critica. Treatise on Magic, Harriette Wilson [see British Museum Satires No. 14828, &c], Duty of Man, Mackenzie ['Man of Feeling'], Treatise on Doubt, Philosophers Stone, Combe [two volumes], Treatise on Gold Making, Bells Brain [two volumes, 'New Idea of the Anatomy of the Brain', 1811]. On the wall are three pictures: Bumps, two little boys boxing with huge spherical gloves; Life's a Bumper, a fat 'cit' toping in an arm-chair; Tony Lumpkin, who cracks a whip, and shouts as in Goldsmith's play. Below these are pinned up a pictorial advertisement and three prints. The first is headed by a human eye and the inscription, Sold by Royal Patent Phrenological Hats Adapted to Every Protuberance of Faculty or Organ Yet Discovered, above a cluster of misshapen hats and a little man wearing such a hat; below: To be Had [in] Caster . . . Two prints illustrate bust portraits: Abstraction and Suspicion. The third, Prying, is a print of Paul Pry, see British Museum Satires No. 15138."--British Museum online catalogue