No. XL.

Nec te quæsiveris extra.

PERSIUS.

Let your own eyes be those with which you see.
DRUMMOND.

HAVING in a former paper set forth the valuable privileges and prerogatives of the Ear, I should be very much wanting to another material part of our composition, if I did not do justice to the Eyes, and shew the influence they either have, or ought to have, in Great Britain.

While the eyes of my countrymen were in a great measure the part that directed, the whole people saw for themselves; seeing was called believing, and was a sense so much trusted to, that the eyes of the body and those of the mind were, in speaking, indifferently made use of for one another; but I am sorry to say, that the case is now greatly altered; and I observe with concern an epidemical blindness, or, at least, a general weakness and distrust of the eyes, scattered over this whole kingdom; from which we may justly apprehend the worst consequences.

This observation must have, no doubt, occurred to all who frequent public places, who,

instead of seeing so many eyes employed, as usual, either in looking at one another, or in viewing attentively the object that brings them there, we find them modestly delegating their faculty to glasses of all sorts and sizes to see for them. I remarked this more particularly at an opera I was at the beginning of this winter, where Polypheme was almost the only person in the house that had two eyes; the rest had but one a-piece, and that a glass one.

As I cannot account for this general decay of our optics from any natural cause, not having observed any alteration in our climate or manner of living considerable enough to have brought so suddenly upon us this universal shortsightedness, I cannot but entertain some suspicions that these pretended helps to the sight are rather deceptions of it, and the inventions of wicked and designing persons, to represent objects in that light, shape, size, and number, in which it is their inclination or interest to have them beheld. I shall communicate to the public the grounds of my suspicion.

The honest plain spectacles and readingglasses were formerly the refuge only of aged and decayed eyes; they accompanied grey hairs, and in some measure shared their respect; they magnified the object a little, but still they re

presented it in its true light and figure. Whereas, now, the variety of refinements upon this first useful invention have persuaded the youngest, the strongest, and the finest eyes in the world, out of their faculty, and convinced them that, for the true discerning of objects, they must have recourse to some of these artificial medi ums: nay, into such disrepute is the natural sight now fallen, that we may observe, while one eye is employed in the glass, the other is carefully covered with the hand, or painfully shut, not without shocking distortions of the counte

nance.

It is very well known that there are not above three or four eminent operators for these portable or pocket-eyes, and that they engross that whole business. Now, as these persons are not people of quality (who are always above such infamous and dirty motives), it is not unreasonable to suppose that they may be liable to a pecuniary influence; nor consequently is it improbable, that an administration should think it worth its while, even at a large expense, to secure those few that are to see for the bulk of the whole nation. This surely deserves our attention.

It is most certain, that great numbers of people already see objects in a very different light

from what they were ever seen in beforé by the naked and undeluded eye; which can only be ascribed to the misrepresentations of some of these artificial mediums, of which I shall enumerate the different kinds that have come to my knowledge.

The looking-glass, which for many ages was the minister and counsellor of the fair sex, has now greatly extended its jurisdiction: every body knows that that glass is backed with quicksilver, to hinder it from being diaphanous; so that it stops the beholder, and presents it again to himself. Here his views centre all in himself, and dear self alone is the object of his contemplations. This kind of glass, I am assured, is now the most common of any, especially among people of distinction; insomuch, that nine in ten of the glasses that we daily see levelled at the public are in reality not diaphanous, but agreeably return the looker to himself, while his attention seems to be employed upon others.

The reflecting telescope has of late gained ground considerably, not only among the ladies, who chiefly view one another through that me dium, but has even found its way into the cabinets of princes; in both which cases it suggests reflections to those who before were not apt to make many.

The microscope, or magnifying glass, is an engine of dangerous consequence, though much in vogue: it swells the minutest object to a most monstrous size; heightens the deformity, and even deforms the beauties, of nature. When the finest hair appears like a tree, and the finest pore like an abyss, what disagreeable misrepresentations may it exhibit, and mutually occasion between the two sexes! Nature has formed all objects for that point of view in which they appear to the naked eye; their perfection lessens in proportion, as they leave that point; and many a Venus would cease to appear one, even to her lover, were she, by the help of a microscope, to be viewed in the ambient clouds of her insensible perspiration. I bar Mrs. Osborne's returning my microscope upon me, since I leave her in quiet possession of the spectacles, and even of the reading-glasses, if she can make use of them.

There is another kind of glass, now in great use, which is the oblique glass, whose tube, levelled in a straight line at one object, receives another in at the side, so that the beholder seems to be looking at one person while another entirely engrosses his attention. This is a notorious engine of treachery and deceit; and yet they say it is for the most part made use of by ministers to their friends, and ladies to their husbands.