Self is the schoolmaster whose lessons are best worth his wages; and since the subject I am considering has not yet become a branch of formal instruction, those whom it may interest can, fortunately, have no pedagogue but themselves. To the natural philosopher, the descriptive poet, the painter, the sculptor, and indeed every earnest observer, the power most important to cultivate, and, at the same time, hardest to acquire, is that of seeing what is before him. Sight is a faculty; seeing, an art. The eye is a physical but not a self-acting apparatus, and in general it sees only what it seeks. Like a mirror, it reflects objects presented to it; but it may be as insensible as a mirror, and not consciously perceive what it reflects. [Footnote: --I troer, at Synets Sands er lagt i Oiet, Mens dette kun er Redskab. Synet strommer Fra Sjaelens Dyb, og Oiets fine Nerver Gaae ud fra Hjernens hemmelige Vaerksted. Henrik Hertz, Kong Rene's Datter, sc. ii. In the material eye, you think, sight lodgeth! The EYE is but an organ. SEEING streameth from the soul's inmost depths. The fine perceptive Nerve springeth from the brain's mysterious workshop.] It has been maintained by high authority, that the natural acuteness of our sensuous faculties cannot be heightened by use, and hence, that the minutest details of the image formed on the retina are as perfect in the most untrained as in the most thoroughly disciplined organ. This may be questioned, and it is agreed on all hands that the power of multifarious perception and rapid discrimination may be immensely increased by well-directed practice. [Footnote: Skill in marksmanship, whether with firearms or with other projectile weapons, depends more upon the training of the eye than is generally supposed, and I have often found particularly good shots to possess an almost telescopic vision. In the ordinary use of the rifle, the barrel is guided by the eye, but there are sportemen who fire with the butt of the gun at the hip. In this case, as in the use of the sling, the lasso, and the bolas, in hurling the knife (see Babinet, Lectures, vii., p. 84), in throwing the boomerang, the javelin, or a stone, and in the employment of the blowpipe and the bow, the movements of the hand and arm are guided by that mysterious sympathy which exists between the eye and the unseeing organs of the body. "Some men wonder whye, in casting a man's eye at the marke, the hand should go streighte. Surely if he considered the nature of a man's eye he would not wonder at it: for this I am certaine of, that no servaunt to his maister, no childe to his father, is so obedient, as every joynte and peece of the bodye is to do whatsover the eye biddes."--Roger Ascham, Taxophilus, Book ii.