( 288 ) 



ELOQUENCE OF THE EYES. 



NOTHING is more common than to speak of reading a man's eyes 

 ("or woman's either"): they are the mirror of the soul; for the 

 most secret operations of the finest part of man are depicted upon 

 these external organs, which transmit them to us under their differ- 

 ent colours. The moralist, as M. Petit Radel remarks, whose at- 

 tention is confined to the simple phenomena which observation 

 offers to him, in the greater part of the cases within his province, 

 admires the power of me creative genius which formed so intimate 

 a correspondence between the seat of sentiment and this external 

 faculty by which it is manifested. Satisfied with the appearances 

 which he discovers, he renders them subservient to his views, and 

 then, borrowing his materials from the history of the human heart, 

 he forms a doctrine, which cannot but be advantageous to morality. 

 The investigator of the phenomena of animated nature goes much 

 further; entirely occupied in tracing the causes which animate 

 organs so eloquent, he developes, with the aid of his scalpel, those 

 nervous filaments, of which the last ramifications disappear in their 

 intimate structure, and, by a retrograde operation, he pursues them 

 to the centre of that pulpy substance which is enclosed by the cra- 

 nium, where anatomists have examined them from age to age, with 

 a view to demonstrate their peculiar organization. He sees a com- 

 merce, more or less active, established between the organs which 

 perceive objects from without, and those which modify perception 

 within ; but still the cause of the secondary emotion experienced 

 from them by the heart, which by a sort of reaction manifests the 

 part taken by it in these wonderful operations, remains concealed. 



Without enquiring after the hidden springs, of which the action 

 produces these singular effects, the votaries of the muses are not the 

 less induced by them, to express them in the different pictures in 

 which they represent man agitated by certain passions proper to 

 give energy to their pencils. Ancient and modern poesy has em- 

 ployed the most brilliant epithets to characterise that tranquil state 

 of mind, which is remarked in a good man on interrogating his 

 eyes ; and, when in the midst of the storms of life fate weighs heavily 

 upon him, do not his eyes, enlightened by hope, which still shines 

 through the gloom, exhibit a wise resignation to misfortunes which 

 he cannot avoid ? Pride, anger, envy, and fear, have chosen these 

 organs to furnish the indices by which they may be known. What 

 would have been the force of the " Quos ego," in the jEneid, if the 

 eyes of the angry god who pronounces them had not a part in the 

 passion which moved him? Homer, notwithstanding his divine elo- 



