THE PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
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in them, and gave them power of charming."
"Grace was in her steps, heaven in her eye, In all her gestures, dignity and love."
Without this irradiating power the
most perfect symmetry of form, the most faultless regularity of features, and the most delicate tints of com- plexion are like the beautiful shadings of a picture, uninformed and dead. I will illustrate this remark by a brief (quotation from Campbell :
" For with affections warm, intense, re- fined,
She mixed such calm and holy strength of mind,
That, like Heaven's image in a smiling brook.
Celestial peace was pictur'd in her look.
Her's was the brow, in trials unperplexed.
That cheered the sad and tranquilized the vexed :
She studied not the meanest to eclipse ;
And yet the wisest listened to her lips ;
She sung not, Imew not nuisic's magic skill,
But yet her voice had tones that swayed the will."
In the language of science as well as of love, the eye has ever been re- garded as the index of the soul ; though, it must be admitted, that a handsome eye, like charity, often covers a multitude of sins. There is no pas- sion which is not expressed by it. Now it is radiant with joy ; now shaded with sorrow. Now it assumes the fierce stare of defiance, now the steady gaze of intense affection. In one person :
"Like the Jewish oracle of gems, it sparkles information ;"
In another, it wears the lack-lustre hue of idiocy. Each emotion has its appropriate sign ; each passion its in- telligible language, in the eye. A single glance will, sometimes, admin- ister more touching reproof, and ex- cite more distressing terror, than the strongest spoken language. When the apostle Peter, in a paroxysm of rage, was denying his Master, with oaths and imprecations, it is recorded that
��" the Lord turned and looked upon Peter;" and by that look he was hum- bled and subdued, so that " he went out and wept bitterly."
Josephine said of Bonaparte, that, in times of high excitement, there was something terrible in his eye. Cajsar could awe a Roman senate by a look or the tap of his finger. Taci- tus says of Domitian, that the expres- sion of his eye was so terrible that paleness overspread every counte- nance upon which he fixed his scru- tiny, and that the stoutest heart would quail before his steady gaze. The eye also has its melting as well as chilling moods. It can warm with love as well as freeze with horror. Amorous poets, from Anacreon to Tom. Moore, have regarded the eye as the very armory of Cupid. "Ocuili sunt in amore duces," says Propertius. The Teian bard, more than two thou- sand years ago, addressing the artist whom he had invoked to paint his fair inamorata, says :
" But hast thou"any sparkles warm The lightening of her eyes to form? Let them effuse the azure ray With which Minerva's glances play. And give them all that liquid fire That Venus's languid eyes inspire."
Even Homer, in the stately march of the lofty Epic, was not indifferent to the form, color, and expression of the eyes, in those celestial beings whom he introduces. He seldom mentions a goddess without an epithet descriptive of her eyes. In Juno, he seems to think only of the majesty of the queen of heaven. He applies to her an epithet descriptive of size. He ascribes to Venus
"Persuasive speech, and more persua- sive sighs.
Silence that spoke, and eloquence of eyes."
The calm wisdom of Minerva beamed from azure eyes. Poets, I beheve, * have been fond of associating sweet- ness of temper with blue eyes. At least, so did Tom Moore :
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