e 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 pass'd
With me but roughly since I heard 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 in a waking dream, 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
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.

How many drawing-books have you filled,--I said,--since you began to take
lessons?--This was the first,--she answered,--since she was here; and it
was not full, but there were many separate sheets of large size she had
covered with drawings.

I turned over the leaves of the book before us. Academic studies,
principally of the human figure. Heads of sibyls, prophets, and so
forth. Limbs from statues. Hands and feet