to find antiquity there. It has become a common enough margin of

dreams to him; and he does not attend to its phantasies. He knows
that he has a frolic spirit in his head which has its way at those

hours, but he is not interested in it. It is the inexperienced
child who passes with simplicity through the marginal country; and

the thing he meets there is principally the yet further conception
of illimitable time.

His nurse's lullaby is translated into the mysteries of time. She
sings absolutelyimmemorial words. It matters little what they may

mean to waking ears; to the ears of a child going to sleep they tell
of the beginning of the world. He has fallen asleep to the sound of

them all his life; and "all his life" means more than older speech
can well express.

Ancient custom is formed in a single spacious year. A child is
beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that

the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to
throw it further back - it is already so far. That is, it looks as

remote to the memory of a man of thirty as to that of a man of
seventy. What are a mere forty years of added later life in the

contemplation of such a distance? Pshaw!
EYES

There is nothing described with so little attention, with such
slovenliness, or so without verification - albeit with so much

confidence and word-painting - as the eyes of the men and women
whose faces have been made memorable by their works. The describer

generally takes the first colour that seems to him probable. The
grey eyes of Coleridge are recorded in a proverbial line, and

Procter repeats the word, in describing from the life. Then
Carlyle, who shows more signs of actual attention, and who caught a

trick of Coleridge's pronunciationinstantly" target="_blank" title="ad.立即，立刻">instantly, proving that with his
hearing at least he was not slovenly, says that Coleridge's eyes

were brown - "strange, brown, timid, yet earnest-looking eyes." A
Coleridge with brown eyes is one man, and a Coleridge with grey eyes

another - and, as it were, more responsible. As to Rossetti's eyes,
the various inattention of his friends has assigned to them, in all

the ready-made phrases, nearly all the colours.
So with Charlotte Bronte. Matthew Arnold seems to have thought the

most probable thing to be said of her eyes was that they were grey
and expressive. Thus, after seeing them, does he describe them in

one of his letters. Whereas Mrs Gaskell, who shows signs of
attention, says that Charlotte's eyes were a reddish hazel, made up

of "a great variety of tints," to be discovered by close looking.
Almost all eves that are not brown are, in fact, of some such mixed

colour, generally spotted in, and the effect is vivacious. All the
more if the speckled iris has a dark ring to enclose it.

Nevertheless, the eye of mixed colour has always a definite
character, and the mingling that looks green is quite unlike the

mingling that looks grey; and among the greys there is endless
difference. Brown eyes alone are apart, unlike all others, but

having no variety except in the degrees of their darkness.
The colour of eyes seems to be significant of temperament, but as

regards beauty there is little or nothing to choose among colours.
It is not the eye, but the eyelid, that is important, beautiful,

eloquent, full of secrets. The eye has nothing but its colour, and
all colours are fine within fine eyelids. The eyelid has all the

form, all the drawing, all the breadth and length; the square of
great eyes irregularly wide; the long corners of narrow eyes; the

pathetic outward droop; the delicatecontrarysuggestion of an
upward turn at the outer corner, which Sir Joshua loved.

It is the blood that is eloquent, and there is no sign of blood in
the eye; but in the eyelid the blood hides itself and shows its

signs. All along its edges are the little muscles, living, that
speak not only the obvious and emphatic things, but what

reluctances, what perceptions, what ambiguities, what half-
apprehensions, what doubts, what interceptions! The eyelids

confess, and reject, and refuse to reject. They have expressed all
things ever since man was man.

And they express so much by seeming to hide or to reveal that which
indeed expresses nothing. For there is no message from the eye. It

has direction, it moves, in the service of the sense of sight; it
receives the messages of the world. But expression is outward, and

the eye has it not. There are no windows of the soul, there are
only curtains; and these show all things by seeming to hide a little

more, a little less. They hide nothing but their own secrets.
But, some may say, the eyes have emotioninasmuch as they betray it

by the waxing and contracting of the pupils. It is, however, the
rarest thing, this opening and narrowing under any influences except

those of darkness and light. It does take place exceptionally; but
I am doubtful whether those who talk of it have ever really been

attentive enough to perceive it. A nervous woman, brown-eyed and
young, who stood to tell the news of her own betrothal, and kept her

manners exceedinglycomposed as she spoke, had this waxing and
closing of the pupils; it went on all the time like a slow, slow

pulse. But such a thing is not to be seen once a year.
Moreover, it is - though so significant - hardly to be called

expression. It is not articulate. It implies emotion, but does not
define, or describe, or divide it. It is touching, insomuch as we

have knowledge of the perturbed tide of the spirit that must cause
it, but it is not otherwiseeloquent. It does not tell us the

quality of the thought, it does not inform and surprise as with
intricacies. It speaks no more explicit or delicate things than

does the pulse in its quickening. It speaks with less division of
meanings than does the taking of the breath, which has impulses and

degrees.
No, the eyes do their work, but do it blankly, without

communication. Openings into the being they may be, but the closed
cheek is more communicative. From them the blood of Perdita never

did look out. It ebbed and flowed in her face, her dance, her talk.
It was hiding in her paleness, and cloistered in her reserve, but

visible in prison. It leapt and looked, at a word. It was
conscious in the fingers that reached out flowers. It ran with her.

It was silenced when she hushed her answers to the king. Everywhere
it was close behind the doors - everywhere but in her eyes.

How near at hand was it, then, in the living eyelids that expressed
her in their minute and instant and candid manner! All her

withdrawals, every hesitation, fluttered there. A flock of meanings
and intelligences alighted on those mobile edges.

Think, then, of all the famous eyes in the world, that said so much,