Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/99

88 it bursts from hearts as young and buoyant as his own; and he remembers, at the same time, how it was with him in those by-gone days, when, for the moment, he was lifted up above the grovelling cares of every-day existence.

But, above all, the art which preserves to us the features of the loved and lost, ought to be cultivated as a means of natural and enduring gratification. It is curious to look back to the portrait of infancy, or even youth, when the same countenance is stamped with the deep traces of experience, when the venerable brow is ploughed with furrows, and the temples are shaded with scattered looks of silvery hair. It is interesting—deeply interesting, to behold the likeness of some distinguished character, with whose mind we have long been acquainted, through the medium of his works; but the beloved countenance, whose every line of beauty was mingled with our young affections, when this can be made to live before us, after death has done his fearful work, and the grave has claimed its own—we may well say, in the language of the poet, of that magic skill which has such power over the past, as to call up buried images, and clothe them again in beauty and in youth,

Beyond these, however, there are uses in the art of drawing so well worthy the consideration of every young woman of enlightened mind, that we cannot too earnestly recommend this occupation to their attention, even although it should be at some sacrifice of that labyrinthine toil of endless worsted-work, with which, in the case of modern young ladies, both head and hand appear to be so perse- veringly employed. I freely grant the charm there is in