tude, of grief, of joy, of every feeling of which the human heart is capable. It modifies its expression even when no words are uttered, and that expression is always sincere, whether the words may be so or not. Words may be uttered as a mere matter of form, but he is a clever artist who can make the expression of his countenance accord with them, unless it does it naturally.

It is our duty to cultivate the senses, and to seek to improve their powers by all means possible, that they may serve us more perfectly, and minister more thoroughly, not only to the ordinary purposes of our life, but to higher uses-intellectual culture, and æsthetical gratifications. It is easy to lay down this general rule; but it is not so easy to determine how, in particular circumstances, it is to be applied. It is not easy to say who ought more specially to cultivate the eye, and who the ear, it must be determined very much according to natural tastes and gifts. He who is capable of being a musician, will turn in one direction; he who is capable of being a painter, in another, and so on. But a general cultivation of the senses, although a very rare thing, would tend to the more general improvement of all the faculties-not, perhaps, to make a man excel greatly in any particular department, but to make him excel more generally in all departments. This greater general culture might, perhaps, be advantageously balanced against more particular culture in any one particular direction.

SEEING.

The organ of Sight is the eye. There are many animals which are destitute of this organ and of this sense. We find them, however, generally in all classes of animals, except the lowest; not only in all the mammalia, but in all the other vertebrate animals, birds, fishes, amphibia, reptiles, and in molluscs, insects, &c. There are exceptional cases of the want of eyes even among the vertebrate animals, as in certain fishes which inhabit the pools of

caves in America. Where the organ was to be of no use, it has not been bestowed. Some animals have many eyes; this is especially the case in insects. The large eyes of the common fly may be described as consisting each of a multitude of eyes combined into one, each looking in its own particular direction; such eyes are called compound eyes. There are other insects, as the bee, which, besides having eyes of this kind looking to the sides of the head, and each commanding a considerable extent of view, have a number of other very small simple eyes (ocelli) placed on the top of the head to enable them to look upwards. Spiders have a number of eyes, different in different kinds, variously and beautifully arranged, as in the angles of geometrical figures. The creatures thus provided with organs of sight according to the wants of their life, have not the power of moving the head so as to look in different directions, nor the power of moving the eyes themselves in their sockets, which are possessed by the higher animals, and notably by man; but the number and various positions of their eyes afford them all the compensation which they require.

The eye is an organ of very wonderful structure; an optical instrument in the same sense in which a telescope, or microscope is, although it is at the same time much more, through its communicating by the optic nerve with the brain -a fact indisputable, but hitherto as little explained by human science, as the manner in which the brain itself is the organ or instrument of the mind. These are amongst the wonders of the Creator's work, too wonderful, perhaps, for our comprehension-to a comprehension of which, at all events, man, with all his scientific investigations, has never yet been able to reach. The eye may be very fitly compared to a telescope, although vastly smaller, more compact and perfect than any telescope which man has yet contrived in order to aid its powers; a simple eye, as that of man, resembling one telescope; a compound eye, as that of the fly, consisting of many telescopes compacted together

man.

into a cone, from the apex of which the creature that possesses them, looks through them to see external objects. In the eye we find the same properties of lenses turned to account of which the optician avails himself in his instruments, and so it has been since the creation of the world, recent as has been the discovery of these properties by The human eye is a ball, the greater part of which is covered by a white, thick, tough membrane, strong, and resembling parchment, but more pliable. Through this, light cannot penetrate, but the ball is easily movable in its bony socket, so that the only part of the eye which this membrane does not cover, can be turned in every direction, and a large range of vision is thus given, upwards and downwards as well as to both sides. The possession of two eyes also enables us to look far to both sides, whilst the range of vision is more limited to those who have the misfortune to be blind of one. In the front of the eye is a circular portion, not covered by the parchment-like membrane already mentioned. Through this it is that light enters; and through this we see. We do not think it necessary to enter into an anatomical description of the internal structure of the eye. All we shall say on this subject shall be comprised in a few sentences. The seeing part of the eye is covered by a perfectly transparent membrane, which is kept constantly moist by a secretion produced by certain glands appropriated to this purpose, and which, when unusually abundant, flows from the eye in tears; it is also kept constantly clean by the incessant motion or winking of the eyelids, whilst the eyelashes protect it from dust. Behind this, at some distance, is the iris, a circular curtain, with a circular hole in its centre, forming the coloured part of the eye, and in the centre of the iris is the pupil. The iris opens and closes so as to make the visible part of the pupil larger or smaller, still preserving its own circular form, both in its outer circumference and in that inner circumference which leaves the pupil exposed. By closing, to a certain extent, in a strong

light, it protects the pupil from too much light, and by opening when the light is less strong, it admits more rays of it to the inner parts of the eye. It is never opened so widely as when we have to strain our eyes in a light that is almost darkness, unless, perhaps, during darkness itself. Behind the iris is a lens, which acts as a powerful magnifying glass; but the greater part of the eye is filled with a translucent liquid, clear as crystal, in which the iris floats, and in the centre of which the already-mentioned lens is placed. Behind this, in the back of the eye, is a fine white transparent membrane, and immediately behind, a dark curtain called the retina, on which the figures of external objects are painted by means of the lens which forms the pupil; and from the back of the retina proceeds the optic nerve, through which a knowledge of this picture, with all its wondrous minuteness and perfection of form and colour is communicated to the brain, the picture being yet perfectly evanescent, so that when we turn our eyes to another object, or another object is placed before them, the retina is at once, or almost at once, ready to receive a new impression. The more that the structure of the eye is studied, the more perfect will it appear, whether viewed anatomically, or with regard to its adaptation to the properties of light and the physical laws of optics. But who can contemplate this organ, even with a very imperfect knowledge of it, or according to a very imperfect description of it, without being filled with admiration? who, but a fool, can refuse to acknowledge it as the handy-work of God?

So perfect is the structure of the eye, so delicate the retina, that the images produced on the retina are capable of being magnified by artificial means-by lenses of proper powers, through which the eye beholds objects as in an ordinary pair of spectacles, and even by combinations of lenses, as in the telescope and microscope, which since their invention have enabled us vastly to extend our knowledge of the greatest and the most minute of the works of God. But even by the unaided eye, we can

behold objects of which the distance, although we may succeed in stating it in figures, is such that no proper conception of it can be formed by the human mind-stars which are many thousands of millions of miles away. Assisted by the microscope, the eye can also discern creatures so minute, that multitudes of them disport in a single drop of water. No sense reveals to us so much of the wonders of creation, or leads us so directly to the contemplation of the glory of the Creator.

But it is not only in its marvellous power of bringing under our cognizance objects exceedingly remote from us, that the eye excels all other organs of sense. The eye is also capable of expressing, and is constantly employed to express both thought and feeling. By it we communicate with the outward world, not only in receiving impressions, but in conveying sentiments, often more quickly and perfectly than they could be conveyed by language. For every inward emotion the eye has its natural expression; and what the tongue would never be permitted to utter, the eye often reveals. Joy and grief, hope and fear, love and hatred, pity and cruelty, reverence and contempt, generosity and envy, humility and pride, gratitude, wonder, and other states of mind, are expressed through the eye more promptly than they can be expressed by words. Thus it is that the eye imparts so much animation to the human countenance, and the eye of man excels in beauty and in power that of any of the inferior animals, because it is the organ of expression of an intelligence vastly superior to theirs, and of emotions far stronger and more various.

It is not long since the stereoscope was invented, by which both eyes being used at once, pictures, one adapted to each eye, are not only magnified, but brought out into relief, so that the objects represented do not appear as mere pictures, which they would if seen only by one eye, but seem to stand forth as realities, distances being distinguished not only by mere light and shade, but by the apparent projection of one part beyond another. But from