256 HAMPSHIKE DAYS 



ences. One fact in reference to dark- and light-coloured 

 people which I came upon in Hampshire, struck me as 

 exceedingly curious, and has suggested the question: 

 Is there in us, or in some of us, very deep down, and 

 buried out of sight, but still occasionally coming to life 

 and to the surface, an ancient feeling of repulsion or 

 racial antipathy between black and blonde ? Are there 

 mental characteristics, too, that are "mutually exclu- 

 sive " ? Dark and light are mixed in very many of us, 

 but, as Huxley has said, the constituents do not always 

 rightly mix : as a rule, one side is strongest. With the 

 dark side strongest hi me, I search myself, and the only 

 evidence I find of such a feeling is an ineradicable 

 dislike of the shallow frosty blue eye: it makes me 

 shiver, and seems to indicate a cold, petty, spiteful, and 

 false nature. This may be merely a fancy or associa- 

 tion, the colour resembling that of the frosty sky in 

 winter. In many others the feeling appears to be more 

 definite. I know blue-eyed persons of culture, liberal- 

 minded, religious, charitable, lovers of all men, who 

 declare that they cannot regard dark-eyed persons as 

 being on the same level, morally, with the blue-eyed, and 

 that they cannot dissociate black eyes from wickedness. 

 This, too, may be fancy or association. But here in 

 Hampshire I have been startled at some things I have 

 heard spoken by dark- eyed people about blondes. Not 

 of the mitigated Hampshire blonde, with that dimness 

 in the colour of his skin, and eyes, and hair, but of the 

 more vivid type with brighter blue eyes, and brighter or 



