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gem of nature is the eye, and how like a spell doth its language haunt us! Even in the pictures of the old masters, the effect is often centred in the expression of this single organ. What fanciful man, having an inkling of superstition within him, has not sometimes imagined a portrait animated with life? Cover the eyes, and the fantasy is gone. It has been finely remarked of Titian's portraits that they look at us more than we at them. We may forget the countenance of a friend from whom we are divided, in many respects; but if our interest has ever been truly awakened in a fellow-being, the eye-language of the individual can scarcely escape our memories. Who cannot recal, though he may not describe, the eye-language with which a gifted man, under some strong inspiration, has uttered a memorable thought, or with which one near and dear to him has breathed aught of deep interest to his ear? The dignity of self-possessed thought was in the eye of Paul, ere his words affected Festus. The beaming glance of the Grecian mother pointed out her jewels before her lips proclaimed them. The unfortunate know a friend and are re-assured, the timid recognise a master-spirit and are nerved, and the guilty know their accuser and quail, at the first momentary meeting of their gaze. Beware of the man whose eye you can never meet.

Correggio excelled in painting downcast eyes; those of Allston's pictures are remarkable for their grey, intellectual expression. The St. Cecilia of Raphael probably presents the best instance in the art, of the upturned eyes of inspiration. Eye-language is richly illustrated in the pages of Shakspeare. What an idea is given of its perversion in Lear's adjuration to the unfortunate Gloster :

Get thee glass eyes;

And like a scurvy politician, seem
To see the things thou dost not.

Addressing Regan, he says of Goneril, "her eyes are fierce, but thine do comfort and not burn." Cordelia envies not their "still soliciting eyes," and her more honest orbs, at length, prove their simplicity, by shedding "tears as pearls from diamonds dropped." Othello when first awaked to jealousy, in order to satisfy his doubts, exclaims to Desdemona, " let me see your eyes!" Alas! that he did not credit their truthful expression! Fear, too, is strongly evinced by the same wondrous organs. In the awful hints the Ghost gives Hamlet of "that undiscovered country," among the effects prophesied from a more full revelation, is to make his "eyes like stars start from their spheres." In some eyes, the bard bids us behold "a lurking devil," in others "love's richest book,”—in the poet's "a fine phrensy;" and, be it remembered, it was upon the eyes that Puck was ordered to squeeze the little purple flower. Perdita with her fine imagination, could find no better similitude for "violets dim" than "the lids of Juno's eyes." Prospero exultingly declares, when Ferdinand and Miranda meet, “at the first glance, they have changed eyes." Hear Olivia in Twelfth Night:

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What poet has presented such an image of the closed eyes of beauty as that contained in Iachimo's soliloquy over the sleeping Imogen !

"the flame o' the taper

Bows towards her, and would underpeep her lids

To see th' inclosed lights now canopied

With blue of Heaven's own tinct."

The prominent part this miraculous little globe performs in love, is indicated by Romeo in Capulet's garden;

"She speaks, yet she says nothing; what of that?

Her eye discourses, I will answer it."

And when Juliet warns him of her kinsman's designs, he ardently exclaims,—

"Alack! there lies more peril in thine eye,

Than twenty of their swords; look thou but sweet,

And I am proof against their enmity."

The fair object of his passion, as if to reciprocate the sentiment, upon the idea of his death, cries out,—

"To prison eyes! ne'er look on liberty!"

Wolsey anticipated his downfall from the glance of King Henry;" ruin leaped from his eyes." Faulconbridge, as the favors of fortune depart from King John, bids him

"Let not the world see fear and sad distrust

Govern the motions of a kingly eye."

Biron, in Love's Labors Lost, in balancing the advantages of book-lore and eye-language, declares—

"From woman's eye this doctrine I derive:

They are the ground, the books, the academies,

From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.

For where is any author in the world

Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?"

How finely is the moral expression of the eye suggested by the Friar who advocates the innocence of Hero;

"in her eye there hath appeared a fire,

To burn the errors that these princes hold. ¡
Against her maiden truth."

Bassanio augurs his success with Portia because, he says,

"Sometimes from her eyes

I did receive fair, speechless messages."

And even the incorrigible Benedick says to Beatrice-"I will Phoebe declares of Rosalind—

be buried in thy eyes."

<< faster than his tongue

Did make offence, his eye did heal it up."

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In discussing the beauty of the ancient Greeks, Shelley suggests that the eye of the women of that nation, on account of their social degradation, could not have been deep and intricate from the workings of the mind." Eye-language is, indeed, no light test of cultivation; of native disposition it is a most authentic reporter. Hunt, in describing the hero of Rimini, alludes with singular beauty, to the

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Who has not realized the power of Byron's simile-"like the light of a dark eye in woman?" Falstaff vaunts of Page's wife, "sometimes the beam of her view gilded my foot, sometimes my portly belly." Uncle Toby's dangerous experiment in the sentry-box is well known; and what a holy guidance Petrarch found in the eyes of Laura!

"Gentil mia donna, io veggio

Nel mover de' vostri occhi un dolce lume
Che mi mostra la via che al ciel conduce."

An old dramatist has this conceit;

"A smile shoots graceful upward from her eyes

As if they had gained a victory o'er grief;

And with it many beams twisted themselves,

Upon whose golden threads the angels walk
To and again from heaven."

Eye-language, in its sweetest manifestations, is unfortunately liable to change, like everything delightful upon this earth. Touching this, a bacheloric essayist of some note thus reasoneth:

"Ask the married man who has been so but a short time, if those blue eyes, where, during many years of anxious courtship, truth, sweetness, serenity, seemed to be written in characters which could not be misunderstood, ask him if the characters they now convey be exactly the same? if for truth, he does not read a dull virtue (the mimic of constancy), which changes not only because it wants the judgment to make a preference? if for sweetness he does not read a stupid habit of being pleased at everything; if for sincerity he does not read animal tranquillity, the dead pool of the heart which no breeze of passion can stir into health."

According to Burke, clearness has much to do with the beauty of the eye, and a languid movement of the organ is most fascinating. Thus Venus is represented with drooping lids. It is observable that while intense thought is indicated by a fixed gaxe, pleasurable emotions, especially of a quiet kind, induce the lids to fall somewhat, while the orb gently rolls. A naturalist once gave me a most vivid description of a species of eagle common in the West, the vibration of whose eye corresponded precisely with that of the second-hand of an oldfashioned clock. Whoever has attentively watched the progress of a bust under the hand of a modeller, must have realized the importance of shape in giving its peculiar character to the eye. Indeed, the skill of an artist may be estimated in no small degree, by his success in this regard. Inferior sculptors gene

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