Who was the artist that produced
it? I know not; but it bears the strongest marks of authenticity, if to
be exactly what a learned spirit would fancy Elizabeth--young, a
prisoner, and in peril--be evidence of true portraiture. There is pride,
not aping humility, but wearing it as a well-beseeming habit;--there is
passion, strongly controlled by the will, but not extinct, neither dead
nor sleeping, but watchful and silent; brows sternly sustaining a weight
of care, after which a crown could be but light; a manly intellect,
allied with female craft;--but nonsense! it will be said; no colours
whatever could represent all this, and that, too, in little, for the
picture was among Bone's enamels. Well, then, it suggested it all.
Perhaps the finest Madonna ever painted would be no more than a meek,
pious, pretty woman, and an innocent child, if we knew not whom it was
meant for.
* * * * *
THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
(_By Mrs. Hemans._)
I seem like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he, departed.
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