int into my eyes, had not the Duke of Buckingham
guided his hand aright." It is he, too, who tells the story of the
_mulberry mark_ upon the neck of a certain lady of high condition, which
"every year, in mulberry season, did swell, grow big, and itch." And
Gaffarel mentions the case of a girl born with the figure of a _fish_ on
one of her limbs, of which the wonder was, that, when the girl did eat
fish, this mark put her to sensible pain. But there is no end to cases
of this kind, and I could give some of recent date, if necessary,
lending a certain plausibility at least to the doctrine of transmitted
impressions.

I never saw a distinct case of _evil eye_, though I have seen eyes so
bad that they might produce strange effects on very sensitive natures.
But the belief in it under various names, fascination, _jettatura_,
etc., is so permanent and universal, from Egypt to Italy, and from the
days of Solomon to those of Ferdinand of Naples, that there must be some
_peculiarity_, to say the least, on which the opinion is based. There is
very strong evidence that some such power is exercised by certain of the
lower animals. Thus, it is stated on good authority that "almost every
animal becomes panic-struck at the sight of the _rattlesnake_, and seems
at once deprived of the power of motion, or the exercise of its usual
instinct of self-preservation." Other serpents seem to share this power
of fascination, as the _Cobra_ and the _Bucephalus Capensis_. Some think
that it is nothing but fright; others attribute it to the

"strange powers that lie
Within the magic circle of the eye,"--

as Churchill said, speaking of Garrick.

You ask me about those mysterious and frightful intimacies between
children and serpents of which so many instances have been recorded. I
am sure I cannot tell what to make of them. I have seen several such
accounts in recent papers, but here is one published in the seventeenth
century which is as striking as any of the more modern ones:--

"Mr. _Herbert Jones_ of _Monmouth_, when he was a little Boy, was used
to eat his Milk in a Garden in the Morning, and was no sooner there, but
a large Snake always came, and eat out of the Dish with him, and did so
for a considerable time, till one Morning, he striking the Snake on the
Head, it hissed at him. Upon which he told his Mother that the Baby (for
so he call'd it) cry'd _Hiss_ at him. His Mother had it kill'd, which
occasioned him a great _Fit of Si