Squinting, according to a French writer, is not unpleasing, when it is not in excess. He is probably right in this observation. A slight obliquity of vision sometimes gives an archness of expression, and always adds to the countenance a peculiarity, which when the countenance has once become agreeable to the beholder, renders it more so. But when the eye-balls recede from each other to the outer verge of their orbits, or approach so closely that nothing but the intervention of the nose seems to prevent their meeting, a sense of distortion is produced, and consequently of pain. _Il y a des gens_, says Vigneul Marville, _qui ne sauroient regarder des louches sans en sentir quelque douleur aux yeux. Je suis des ceux-la._ This is because the deformity is catching, which it is well known to be in children; the tendency to imitation is easily excited in a highly sensitive frame—as in them; and the pain felt in the eyes gives warning that this action which is safe only while it is unconscious and unobserved, is in danger of being deranged. A cast of the eye _à la Montmorency_ was much admired at the Court of Louis XIII. where the representative of that illustrious family had rendered it fashionable by his example. Descartes is said to have liked all persons who squinted for his nurse's sake, and the anecdote tells equally in favour of her and of him. St. Evremond says in writing the Eulogy of Turenne. _Je ne m'amuserai point à depeindre tous les traits de son visage. Les caractéres des Grands Hommes n'ont rien de commun avec les portraits des belles femmes. Mais je puis dire en gros qu'il avoit quelque chose d'auguste et d'agréable; quelque chose en sa physionomie qui faisoit concevoir je ne sai quoi de grand en son ame, et en son esprit. On pouvoit juger à le voir, que par un disposition particuliere la Nature l'avoit préparé à faire tout ce qu'il a fait._ If Turenne had not been an ill-looking man, the skilful eulogist would not thus have excused himself from giving any description of his countenance; a countenance from which indeed, if portraits belie it not, it might be inferred that nature had prepared him to change his party during the civil wars, as lightly as he would have changed his seat at a card-table,—to renounce the Protestant faith, and to ravage the Palatinate. _Ne souvenez-vous pas de la physionomie funeste de ce grand homme,_ says Bussy Rabutin to Madame de Sevigné. An Italian bravo said _che non teneva specchio in camera, perche quando si crucciava diveniva tanto terribile nell' aspetto, che veggendosi haria fatto troppo gran paura a se stesso._[1] [Footnote 1: IL CORTEGIANO, 27.] Queen Elizabeth could not endure the sight of deformity; when she went into public her guards it is said removed all misshapen and hideous persons out of her way.