She would share life and death,
heaven and hell, with me. She lives but for me; and I know I have been
wasting and teasing her life for five years past incessantly with my
cursed ways of going on. But even in this upbraiding of myself I am
offending against her, for I know that she has cleaved to me for better,
for worse; and if the balance has been against her hitherto, it was a
noble trade. I am stupid, and lose myself in what I write. I write
rather what answers to my feelings (which are sometimes sharp enough)
than express my present ones, for I am only flat and stupid. I am sure
you will excuse my writing any more, I am so very poorly.
I cannot resist transcribing three or four lines which poor Mary made
upon a picture (a Holy Family) which we saw at an auction only one week
before she left home. They are sweet lines, and upon a sweet picture.
But I send them only as the last memorial of her.
VIRGIN AND CHILD, L. DA VINCI.
"Maternal Lady, with thy virgin-grace,
Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth, sure,
And thou a virgin pure.
Lady most perfect, when thy angel face
Men look upon, they wish to be
A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee."
You had her lines about the "Lady Blanch." You have not had some which
she wrote upon a copy of a girl from Titian, which I had hung up where
that print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully interpreted two
female figures from L.
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