Aware as I may be, that “large dark eyes” are no novelty in tales like this; and famous for rare originality as my pen (not to say genius) would become, if an attempt were herein made to interest the world in a pink-eyed heroine, still I prefer plodding on in the well-worn path of pleasant beauty; and so long as Nature’s bounty continues to supply so well the world we live in with large dark eyes, and other feminine perfections, our Emily, at any rate, remains in fashion; and if she has many pretty peers, let us at least not peevishly complain of them.  A graceful shape is, luckily, almost the common prerogative of female youthfulness; a dimpled smile, a cheerful, winning manner, regular features, and a mass of luxuriant brown hair—­these all heroines have—­and so has our’s.

But no heroine ever had yet Emily Warren’s eyes; not identically only, which few can well deny; but similarly also, which the many must be good enough to grant:  and very few heroes, indeed, ever saw their equal; though, if any hereabouts object, I will not be so cruel or unreasonable as to hope they will admit it.  At first, full of soft light, gentle and alluring, they brighten up to blaze upon you lustrously, and fascinate the gazer’s dazzled glance:  there are depths in them that tell of the unfathomable soul, heights in them that speak of the spirit’s aspirations.  It is gentleness and purity, no less than sensibility and passion, that look forth in such strange power from those windows of the mind:  it is not the mere beautiful machine, fair form, and pleasing colours, but the heaven-born light of tenderness and truth, streaming through the lens, that takes the fond heart captive.  Charles, for one, could not help looking long and keenly into Emily Warren’s eyes; they magnetized him, so that he might not turn away from them:  entranced him, that he would not break their charm, had he been able:  and then the long tufted eyelashes droop so softly over those blazing suns—­that I do not in the least wonder at Charles’s impolite, perhaps, but still natural involuntary stare, and his mute abstracted admiration:  the poor youth is caught at once, a most willing captive—­the moth has burnt its wings, and flutters still happily around that pleasant warming radiance.  How his heart yearned for something to love, some being worthy of his own most pure affections:  and lo! these beauteous eyes, true witnesses of this sweet mind, have filled him for ever and a day with love at first sight.

But gentle Charles was not the only conquest:  the fiery Julian, too, acknowledged her supremacy, bowed his stubborn neck, and yoked himself at once, another and more rugged captive, to the chariot of her charms.  It was Caliban, as well as Ferdinand, courting fair Miranda.  In his lower grade, he loved—­fiercely, coarsely:  and the same passion, which filled his brother’s heart with happiest aspirations, and pure unselfish tenderness towards the beauteous stranger, burnt him up as an inward and consuming fire:  Charles sunned himself in heaven’s genial beams, while Julian was hot with the lava-current of his own bad heart’s volcano.