Basil

Chapter 1

PART III.

I.

WHEN the blind are operated on for the restoration of sight, the same

succouring hand which has opened to them the visible world,

immediately shuts out the bright prospect again, for a time. A bandage

is passed over the eyes, lest in the first tenderness of the recovered

sense, it should be fatally affected by the sudden transition from

darkness to light. But between the awful blank of total privation of

vision, and the temporary blank of vision merely veiled, there lies

the widest difference. In the moment of their restoration, the blind

have had one glimpse of light, flashing on them in an overpowering

gleam of brightness, which the thickest, closest veiling cannot

extinguish. The new darkness is not like the void darkness of old; it

is filled with changing visi