BODY AND MIXD. 213 



who may sometimes not over-wisely strain his authority, and abuse 

 the prerogative with which he is invested. Similarly, "the sacred 

 source of sympathetic tears " rests in the mental emotion and 

 its effect upon the tear-glands of the eyes ; and such unwonted 

 stimulation of these latter organs has. come to be associated with 

 certain emotions as the most stable expression of their existence. 

 In such a study we may well discover how the physical and material 

 basis whereon the expression of the emotions rests, is in reality 

 constituted by the action and interaction of like processes to 

 these we have been considering. An inhibition conveyed from 

 brain to heart, and its visible effects on the body, together form 

 the outcome of emotion, or expression, which, by long repetition 

 in the history of our race, has come to be recognised as a sure sign 

 and symptom of the thoughts and ways of mind. 



This inhibition of the heart and its action, however, is not the 

 only influence which is brought to bear on the normal work of that 

 organ. If it is slowed by fear, it is stimulated by joy ; if it is chilled 

 by anguish, it is quickened by hope ; and if the pallid countenance be 

 an index of the one set of emotions, no less is the flushed visage and 

 mantling colour the true expression of the other. By what means 

 are the trains of thought laden with the hopes and joys of life made 

 to affect the heart ? To what do 



Sensations sweet, 

 Felt in the blood and felt along the heart, 



owe their propagation and conveyance? The answer is found in a study 

 of the sympathetic system of nerves and its influence on the circulation. 

 Experiment and analogy clearly prove, that through these latter 

 nerves, the pulses of joy affect the throbs of the heart, and quicken 

 its pulsations. The sympathetic nerves are thus the antagonists of 

 the inhibitory fibres before-mentioned, which slo\v the heart's action, 

 and chill the pulses of life. True, they are not of such powerful kind, 

 and their action is not of such marked character as that of the fibres 

 which retard the throbs of the heart. Still, the influence of the lines 

 along which the impulses which quicken its action run, is marked and 

 distinct enough ; and it may be logically enough conceived, that in 

 the subject of the beaming eye, in whose breast hope ever renews her 

 'flattering tale/' the sympathetic impulses have acquired a power 

 unknown to the mind harassed by continual fears. And in a 

 manner similar to that in which the cheering influences of life pass 

 to quicken the action of the heart, are there more visible expressions 

 of the emotions produced, in the tell-tale blush and in the mantling 

 colour. Donne gives vent to no mere poetic phantasy, but declares 

 a veritable fact of physiology, when he declares, in his Funeral Elegy 

 " On the Death of Mistress Dairy," that 



