Some Terrible Eyes.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 897, 10 May 1889, Page 10

Some Terrible Eyes.

Gentleman’s MagazineCmsar Borgia had eyes which made most of those who came into contact with him—at any rate if they were, or were with the most remote probability suspeoted of being, in any way hostile to his incessant nefarious plans—shudder under their baleful light. Hera, however, was no overawing dignity, no habitude of command, serenely stern, no deep insight into the minds and plans of those on whom those fierce eyes rested. They Bimply expresse savage fury—that of the wolf which Blays and slays and slays, and which loves the scent of blood. Always ready, even in his moments of revelry, to sparkle with fierce passion, Csesar Borgia’s ey?B, say those who knew him most intimately, were always as those of a wild beast, ready at any moment to kill and devour. If, as was generally the oase with him, anger inflamed his heart, the fierceness of his demon-heart made hiseyos, say the chroniclers, * gleam like balls of redfire, so that one might have imagined a fierce forest beast was looking out on them, and the bystanders were shuddering with fear. ” Indeed, it was common in Italy at the time to rank Cms- r Borgia’s eyes with the malocchio, and for those who had ever seen them in anger to devoutly hope so dreadful an experience would never be repeated. This instance is one of brutal, passionate, rending, tearing, tigerlike hate, infusing the terror into the eyes with a frank, undisguised openness, only possible to the time and the manners. Neither the surroundings of autocracy nor the claims of chieftainship to implicit obedience had anything whatever to do with the effect produced. ’ Mere social terror was the factor ; but it was undisguised and personal. Here, again, with the difference that it was disguised by the hypocrisy of a later age, aud

by the cunning nature of the man posing as a mere mouthpiece of a people, we find a parallel centuries later. Of Maximilian Robespierre no one can adequately paint the portrait after Carlyle has limned the sea-green, incorruptible, nor may one try to paint those •yee which the same pencil has sketched in a few lines. But certainly to the list of the molt terrible historic eyeß must be added those bilious bloodshot, stealthy orbs which, without any of the tiger fire of Caesar Bargia’s, had a ruthless, shifty, tiger-oat gleam essentially their own. Many have given us some notion of the effect of that little foppishly.dressed tautological man of blood and proscription—few comparatively have particularly noticed his eyes, simply because the horror of expectant fear which his stealthy glance produced in those towards whom it was directed waß so generally and widely known that the very fact made any particular allusion unnecessary. Sometimes, however, in the contemporary literature of souvenirs of the Revolution, we come across an allusion to the grim-visage front of Robespierre and the peculiar shiver felt by those at whom tho dictator looked with any degree of attention. Such a glance intercepted across the table it was which caused the guest at the famous dinner at the restaurant to go outside and find in the tyrant’s coat-pocket the liat of the proscribed, which led to Talliaa's overtdrowiag him, setting all ou the hazard of the die; for whoever found Robespierre’s crafty eyes blinking a; him knew well that that glance wus the preliminary to the Revolutionary Tribunal and the guillotine. Of all Eastern potentates, whethei ancient or modern, competent judges have united in declaring that none ever made hia look more feared than did Runjcct ding, the Lion of Lahore, whom doubtless many old Indians must remember. Eye-witnesses, European as well as native, declared that afnong his wild hordes of followers, some of them among the fiercest troopers in the world, Runjeet inspired intense personal fear in aii who came near by his look, his eyes being unspeakably dreaded. Yet he was seamed with smallpox, one eye wa3 destroyed by It, hia face was wizen, and his voice' a shrill and squeaking one. With all these disadvantages the Lion v of Lahore's glance so terrorised bis subjects thatfor aresnlfcakiu to it we must go to Mahmoud of Ghuzni, whose ‘dreadful brow’ is historic. The otherinstancein whiohpersopal disadvantages ha w e been in inverse ratio to the unquestioned authority exercised is that of a personage much less known, and to whose good quality justice has not yet been perhaps clone. We mean Walker, commonly called the ‘Filibuster.* He was a little, spare, weakly man in aspect—a mere nobody, physically, in the midst of his big, wild Western rangers. But as an eye witness has said, ‘ Walker bad the eyes of a lion.’ In this lay the... seciet' ot the extraordinary authority which he exercised over so many men of the wildest and most daring character, accustomed to brook no master. The indomitable spirit enthroned in that pigmy bcfdy was fitly typified by those lion-like eyes. Nor was it until Walker was roused to auger toat the peculiarforce was found. In such a case all the intense and vivid energy of the man’s heart blazed in his eyes, and then, according to all accounts, they bsoame terrible. Before their anger the biggest Texan ranger cowered like frightened children. Now perhaps, this is of all cases, one of the most noteworthy in the history of terrible eyes, because’the man possessing them had no physical advantages, no settled, authority and prescription, no army of slaves at his baok. On the other haod, those over whom he exeroised undisputed sway were a class of men, if ever there were such in the world, who had the most rugged and turbulent independence of word, action, and nature. ;But the old truth was again realised, and they paid involuntary homage to a born loader of men. For inspiring sheer personal fear there are a few pairs of eyes in our own history which are prominent in its pages, and legend and tradition, clustering round any peculiarity which excites public terror, are, as a rule, more or less based on actual fact. Thus after seven centuries we can still seo the fierce eyes, parti-coloured, of the Red King, glaring at the perpefciators of some infraction of the forest laws, ere, with a choice collection of profanest oaths, he orders them incontinently to tne hangman. Of Henry VIII. nothing in his personality ia more vivid in memory than the ‘terrible glance’ he threw on the cowering deputation of the Commons ‘from the gallery at Whitehall ’ whenever those unfortunate members had to announce that for once the Parliament had ventured to think twice before obeying the King’s behests. And, later on, what personal peculiarity of any prominent Englishman is better known than the ferocious glare of Jefferys 1 half-maddened eyes os the savage Chief Justice, with the thunderous torrents of abuse 'clustered out of his senses ’ some unfortunate wituess on behalf of a State prisoner? Indeed, this peculiarity led to his discovery when the Lord Chancellor, ignobly disguised as a collier’s forem»st : hand, strove to leave the country. ‘ Nay’ said the man who denounced him, when asKed if he was sure of his identity —aud who had been tried before him— * I can never forget those eyes anywhere ! ’ But this particular pair of eyes had no dignity of terror in any shape about them ; despite the Chief Justiceship, they were simply the exponents of blind, furious, half-insane, vulgar rancour —and in this respeot may be considered, differences of time and position being allowed for, as very much akin to Caesar Borgia's.