PHYSIOGNOMY AND . GENIUS 1 59 



Truth to say, however, no ingathering of such data appears to have 

 been made, or, if made, to have been given publication; and, failing 

 statistics at second hand, we have endeavored by search at first hand 

 through some two hundred biographies, to supply the want — less, be it 

 added, as a basis for generalization upon our own part than as an offer- 

 ing of material for study and analysis by others. 



The feature of the countenance which first strikes the observer is the 

 eye — the " lamp of the body " as it is called in the new testament, but 

 more fitly, perhaps, the " lamp of the soul," for in very truth the eyes 

 are the lighted portals to man's inner nature. The most noteworthy 

 circumstance which our data offer is the very large predominance of 

 blue, gray and bluish-gray eyes among personages of distinction. Thus, 

 of seventy-six eminent men whose biographies afforded the information, 

 twenty-five appear to have had blue eyes, seventeen gray and thirteen 

 bluish-gray, making a total of fifty-five. Boasting eyes of blue — the 

 color-symbol of goodness, according to the mystics — were Samuel Adams 

 (dark blue), Matthew Arnold, Charles XII. of Sweden (dark blue), 

 Longfellow, Stephen A. Douglas (dark blue), Eugene Field, Stonewall 

 Jackson (" as a child, blue-eyed "), Charles George Gordon (pale blue), 

 Patrick Henry, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Andrew Jackson, Charles God- 

 frey Leland, "Washington Irving (given as gray by some biographers), 

 Washington Alston, James Monroe (blue, approaching gray), Napoleon 

 (" steel blue "), John Euskin, Savonarola (dark blue), Wm. H. Seward, 

 Shelley, Chas. Sumner ("deep blue"). General Thomas, Grieg, Weber. 

 Among gray eyes — " deep and sly " if we are to heed an old proverb — 

 we have Michael Angelo ("light eyes"). Browning, Caesar (variously 

 given as dark gray and black), Carnegie, Coleridge (described by other 

 authorities as light hazel), Columbus (light gray). Sir Thomas More, 

 Wm. Hazlitt, Ibsen (pale eyes), Washington Irving (dark gray but, 

 according to others, blue), Thomas Jefferson ("gray flecked with 

 hazel"), Milton (dark gray), Francis Parkman, S. S. Prentiss (dark 

 gray), Eobespierre ("pale greenish gray"), Tolstoy, Tennyson (this 

 according to Caroline Fox, but, according to Carlyle, hazel). As repre- 

 senting a blend or play of both colors we have the names of George Wil- 

 liam Curtis, Charles Darwin, Frederick the Great, U. S. Grant (accord- 

 ing to some biographers "dark gray"), Walter Savage Landor, Sidney 

 Lanier, Napoleon (given by others as steel blue), Longfellow (given by 

 other authorities as blue), Theodore Parker, Kossetti (between hazel 

 and blue gray), Thoreau, George Washington, Whitman. It will have 

 been noted that the same name appears occasionally in two of these lists 

 This is owing to a conflict between biographers and the same circum- 

 stance will explain a like duplication in future lists. 



The brown-eyed men among the celebrities of history were Captain 

 Cook, Goethe (dark brown), Keats (hazel brown), Charles Lamb, E. L. 



