That bland, quiet old gentleman, of whom I have spoken as sitting opposite to me, is no exception to the rule. She brought down some mignonette one morning, which she had grown in her chamber. She gave a sprig to her little neighbor, and one to the landlady, and sent another by the hand of Bridget to this old gentleman.
----Sarvant, Ma'am! Much obleeged,--he said, and put it gallantly in his button-hole.--After breakfast he must see some of her drawings. Very fine performances,--very fine!--truly elegant productions,--truly elegant!--Had seen Miss Linley's needle-work in London, in the year (eighteen hundred and little or nothing, I think he said,)--patronized by the nobility and gentry, and Her Majesty,--elegant, truly elegant productions, very fine performances; these drawings reminded him of them;--wonderful resemblance to Nature; an extraordinary art, painting; Mr. Copley made some very fine pictures that he remembered seeing when he was a boy. Used to remember some lines about a portrait written by Mr. Cowper, beginning,--
"Oh that those lips had language! Life has past With me but roughly since I saw thee last."
And with this the old gentleman fell to thinking about a dead mother of his that he remembered ever so much younger than he now was, and looking, not as his mother, but as his daughter should look. The dead young mother was looking at the old man, her child, as she used to look at him so many, many years ago. He stood still as if cataleptic, his eyes fixed on the drawings till their outlines grew indistinct and they ran into each other, and a pale, sweet face shaped itself out of the glimmering light through which he saw them.--What is there quite so profoundly human as an old man's memory of a mother who died in his earlier years? Mother she remains till manhood, and by-and-by she grows, as it were, to be as a sister; and at last, when, wrinkled and bowed and broken, he looks back upon her in her fair youth, he sees in the sweet image he caresses, not his parent, but, as it were, his child.
If I had not seen all this in the old gentleman's face, the words with which he broke his silence would have betrayed his train of thought.
----If they had only taken pictures then as they do now!--he said.--All gone! all gone! nothing but her face as she leaned on the arms of her great chair; and I would give a hundred pound for the poorest little picture of her, such as you can buy for a shilling of anybody that you don't want to see.--The old gentleman put his hand to his forehead so as to shade his eyes. I saw he was looking at the dim photograph of memory, and turned from him to Iris.