ect to
the speculative observer of human nature: and to one who, from early
life, both by profession and inclination, a traveller, has wandered
under every temperature of our eastern hemisphere, who has studied and
admired the sex under every variety of character, no wonder that the
contemplation of woman, as nature left her, inartificial,
unsophisticated, simple, barbarous, and unadorned, should seem fraught
with peculiar interest. Are there any who imagine that my loss of
eye-sight must necessarily deny me the enjoyment of such contemplations?
How much more do I pity the mental darkness which could give rise to
such an error, than they can pity my personal calamity! The feelings and
sympathies which pervade my breast, when in the presence of an amiable
and interesting female, are such as never could have been suggested by
_viewing_ a mere surface of coloured clay, however shaped into beauty,
or however animated by feeling and expression. The intelligence still
allowed me by a beneficent Providence, is amply sufficient to apprise me
of the existence of the more real--the diviner beauties of the soul; and
herein are enjoyments in which I am proud to indulge. A soft and sweet
voice, for instance, affords me a two-fold gratification;--it is a
vehicle of delight, as operating on the appropriate nerves, and, at the
same time, it suggests ideas of _visible_ beauty, which, I admit, may,
by force of imagination, be carried beyond _reality_. But, supposing I
am deceived, are my feelings the less intense?--and, in what consists my
existence, but in those feelings? Is it otherwise with those who _see_?
If it be, I envy them not. But are those who think themselves happier,
in this respect, than I am, sure, that the possession of a more
exquisite sense than any they enjoy, does not, sometimes at least,
compensate, or more than compensate, the curtailments to which the
ordinary senses, and particularly the one of eye-sight, is liable?--and
if they should think so, let them not, at least, deny me the resources I
possess. I shall not, however, persist further in a description of that
situation, those circumstances and those consolations, which the
all-feeling comprehension of the poet hath so justly caught in one of
its diviner moods of inspiration:--

And yet he neither drooped nor pined,
Nor had a melancholy mind;
For God took pity on the boy,
And was his friend--and gave him joy
Of which we nothing know.

The person