"
Another friend of mine, in exploring the more humble class of
boarding-houses in one of our large commercial towns, in search of an
unfortunate relation, found himself, while expecting the landlady,
absorbed in a portrait on the walls of a dingy back-parlor. The
furniture was of the most common description. A few smutched and faded
annuals, half-covered with dust, lay on the centre-table, beside an
old-fashioned astral lamp, a cracked porcelain vase of wax-flowers, a
yellow satin pincushion embroidered with tarnished gold-lace, and an
album of venerable hue filled with hyperbolic apostrophes to the charms
of some ancient beauty; which, with the dilapidated window-curtains, the
obsolete sideboard, the wooden effigy of a red-faced man with a spyglass
under his arm, and the cracked alabaster clock-case on the mantel, all
bespoke an impoverished establishment, so devoid of taste that the
beautiful and artistic portrait seemed to have found its way there by a
miracle. It represented a young and _spirituelle_ woman, in the
costume, so elegant in material and formal in mode, which Copley has
immortalized; in this instance, however, there was a French look about
the coiffure and robe. The eyes were bright with intelligence chastened
by sentiment, the features at once delicate and spirited, and altogether
the picture was one of those visions of blended youth, grace, sweetness,
and intellect, from which the fancy instinctively infers a tale of love,
genius, or sorrow, according to the mood of the spectator.
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