Clear grey-blue eyes, with a calm steadfastness in their glance, are indicative of cheerfulness of disposition, of a serene temper and a constant nature. These eyes are peculiar to the Northern nations; one meets with them among the Swedes, and also sometimes amongst the Scotch. The blue eyes we see among the rare blondes of the South—that is, in Italy and Spain—always have eyes in which there are some greenish tints; and such eyes, though often called light blue, have none of the qualities of serenity and constancy which belong to the light blue eyes of the North. Neither must the pleasant light blue eye, with the honest glance, be confounded with another sort of eye of a pale blue, almost steel-coloured hue, which has a continually shifting sort of motion both of the eyelids and the pupils of the eyes. People with such eyes as these are to be avoided, as they are indicative of a deceitful and selfish nature. Very dark blue eyes, with something of the tint of the violet, show great power of affection and purity of mind, but not much intellectuality.
Grey eyes, of a somewhat greenish grey, with orange as well as blue in them, and which are of ever-varying tints, like the sea, are those which denote most intellectuality. They are especially indicative of the impulsive, impressionable temperament—a mixture of the sanguine and the bilious—which produces the poetic and artistic natures. The line—
"The poet's eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling,"
does not suggest a blue, or even a black, so much as the changeful, ever-varying tinted, grey eye; and it is a fact that in England (where there are more varieties of tints in eyes than in any other country) the poets have almost always grey eyes. A biographer of Byron speaks of his "beautiful, changeful grey eyes, which deepened in colour when he was under the influence of tenderness and passion, and which glowed with a red light when he was angry." Shakespeare also had, we are told, grey eyes, and so had Sir Walter Scott; whilst Coleridge had eyes of a greenish grey. Among the artists, too, eyes of this colour abound.
Black eyes, or what are considered such, are indicative of passionate ardour in love. Brown eyes, when not of the yellowish tint, but pure russet brown, show an affectionate disposition; the darker the brown—that is, the more they verge on to that deepest tint of brown which is seen in eyes we are in the habit of calling black—the more ardent and passionate is the power of affection. The brown eyes which do not appear black—that is, which are not dark enough to appear so—are the eyes of sweet, gentle, and unselfish natures, without the inconstancy of the light brown or yellow eyes—"golden eyes," as they were called by a lady novelist—and which are very little more to be trusted than the green eyes already spoken of. The maiden in Longfellow's Hyperion, of whom he says,
"She has two eyes so soft and brown,
She looketh up, she looketh down;
Beware, beware, she is fooling thee,"
must have had these light brown eyes.
Eyes which show no lines when in sorrow or laughter denote a passionless and unimpressionable nature. Eyes of a long almond shape, with thick-skinned eyelids which appear to cover half the pupil, are indicative of genius; if in conjunction the forehead is that which shows idealism, and has one deep perpendicular line between the eyebrows, which is indicative of originality of mind and which is generally to be seen in the forehead of distinguished writers and artists. It is very remarkable in all the portraits of Michael Angelo. The almond-shaped eye, however, even without this peculiar form of forehead, always means a susceptible, impressionable nature. Eyes which are large, open and very transparent and which sparkle with a rapid motion under well-defined eyelids, denote elegance in tastes, a somewhat susceptible temper and great interest in the opposite sex.