m prospects beyond.... All early writers in Greece
believed in the existence of certain regions situated in the West
beyond the bounds of their actual knowledge, and, as it appears, of too
fugitive a nature ever to be fixed within the circle of authentic
geography. Homer describes at the extremity of the ocean the Elysian
plain, "where, under a serene sky, the favourites of Jove, exempt from
the common lot of mortals, enjoy eternal felicity." Hesiod, in like
manner, sets the Happy Isles, the abode of departed heroes, beyond the
deep ocean. The Hesperia of the Greeks continually fled before them as
their knowledge advanced, and they saw the terrestrial paradise still
disappearing in the West."--Cooley's _History of Maritime Discov_.,
vol. i. p. 25., quoted in Anthon's _Horace_.

A. A. D.

* * * * *

"GREEN EYES."

(Vol. viii., p. 407.)

In the edition of Longfellow's _Poetical Works_ published by Routledge,
1853, the note quoted by Mr. Temple ends thus:

"Dante speaks of Beatrice's eyes as _emeralds_ (_Purgatorio_, xxxi.
116.). Lami says, in his _Annotazioni_, 'Erano i suoi occhi d' un
turchino verdiccio, simile a quel del mare.'"

More in favour of "green eyes" is to be found in one of Gifford's notes on
his translation of the thirteenth satire of _Juvenal_. The words in the
original are:

"Caerula quis stupuit Germani lumina."--_Juv._ Sat. XIII. 164.

And Gifford's note is as follows:

"Ver. 223 ... and _eyes of sapphire blue_?]--The people of the south
seem to have regarded, as a phenomenon, those blue eyes, which with us
are so common, and, indeed so characteristic of beauty, as to form an
indispensable requisite of every Daphne of Grub Street. Tacitus,
however, from whom Juvenal perhaps borrowed the expression, adds an
epithet to _caerulean_, which makes the common interpretation doubtful.
'The Germans,' he says (_De Mor. Ger._ 4.), 'have _truces et caerulei
oculi_, fierce, lively blue eyes.' With us, this colour is always
indicative of a soft, voluptuous languor. What, then, if we have
hitherto mistaken the sense, and, instead of blue, should have said
sea-green? This is not an uncommon colour, especially in the north. I
have seen many Norwegian seamen with eyes of this hue, which were
invariably quick, keen, and glancing.

"Shakspeare, whom nothing escaped,