ntically 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.

It will save much trouble, and do away with no little useless mystery,
to declare, at the outset, which of these opposite twin-brothers our
dark-eyed Emily preferred. She was on