SOME TERRIBLE EYES.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2647, 29 June 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

SOME TERRIBLE EYES.

Ok all Eastern potentates, whether ancient or modern, competent judges have united in declaring that none ever made his look more feared than did Runjeet Sing, the Lion of Lahore, whom doubtless many old Indians must remember. Eye-witnesses, European as well as native, declared that among his wild hordes of followers, some of them among the fiercest troopers in the world, Kunjeet would inspire intense personal fear in all who came near by his look, his eyes being unspeakably dreaded. Yet lie was seamed with smallpox, one eye was destroyed by it, his face was wizen, and his voice a shrill and shrieking one. With all these disadvantages the Lion of Lahore's glauce so terrorised his subjects that for a result akin to it we must go to Mahmoud of Guzni, whose "dreadful brow "is historic. The other instance in which personal disadvantages have been in inverse ratio to the unquestioned authority exercised is that of a personage much less known, and to whose good qualities justice has not yet perhaps been done. We mean Walker, commonly called the " Filibuster." He was a little, spare, weakly man in aspect— a mere nobody, physically, iu the midst of his big, wild Western rangers. But, as an eye-witness has said, " Walker hid the eyes of a lion." In this lay the secret of the extraordinary authority which he exercised over so many men of the wildest and most daring character, accustomed to brook no master. The indomitable spirit enthroned in that pigmy body was fitly typified by those lion-like eyes. Nor was it until Walker was roused to anger that the peculiar force of his look was found. In such a case all the intense and vivid energy of the man's heart blazed in his eyes, and then, according to all accounts, they became terrible. Before their anger the biggest Texan rangers cowed like frightened children. Now perhaps this is, of all cases, one of the most noteworthy in the history of terrible eyes, because the man possessing them had no physical advantages, no settled authority and prescription, no army of slaves at his back. On the other hand, those over whom he exercised undisputed sway were a class of men, if ever there were such in the world, who had the most rugged and turbulent independence of word, action and nature. But the old truth was again realised, and they paid inroluntary homage to a born leader of men. For inspiring sheer personal fear there are few pair of eyes in our own history which are prominent in its pages, and legend and tradition, clustering round any peculiarity which excites public terror, are, as a rule, more or less based 011 actual fact, Thus after seven centuries we can still see the fierce eyrs, particolored, of the Red King, glaring at the perpetrators of some infraction of the forest laws, ere, with a choice collection of the profanest oaths, he orders them incontinently to the hangman. Of Henry VIII. nothing in his personality is more vivid in memory than the " terrible glance " he threw 011 the cowering deputation of the Commons " from tlie galley at Whitehall" whenever those unfortunate members had to announce that for once the Parliament had ventured to think twice before obeying the King's behests. And, later 011, what personal j peculiarity of any prominent Englishman is bettor known than the ferocious glare of Jeffrey's half maddened eyes as the® savage Chief Justice, with thuuderous torrents of abuse, "clattered out of his senses " some unfortunate witnesses ou behalf of a State prisoner ? Indeed, this peculiarity led to his discovery when the Lord Chancellor, ignobly disguised as a collier's foremast hand, strove to leave the country " Nay," said the man who denounced him, when asked if he was sure of his identity—and who had been tried before him —" I can never forget those eye 3 anywhere!" But his particular pair of terrible eyes had 110 dignity of terror in any shape about them ; despite the Chief.Justiceship, they were simply the exponents of blind, furious, half insane, vulgar rancour —and in this respect may be considered, differences of time and position being allowed for, as very much akin to Cresar Borgia's.—Gentleman's Magazine.