Thus slight may
be the thread which changes the entire web of the future! After
greeting my host, and the party assembled in the drawing-room, my
attention was arrested by a portrait suspended in a recess, and partly
veiled by purple curtains, like Isis within her shrine. The lovely,
living eyes beamed upon me out of the shrine, radiant with an internal
light I had never before seen on canvas. The features were harmonious,
the complexion pure and clear, and the whole picture wore an air of
graceful, gentle girlhood, glowing, like Undine, with the flush of 'the
coming soul.' I hardly knew whether the face was strictly beautiful
according to the canons of Art; for only a Shakspeare can be at the
same time critical and sympathetic, and my criticism was baffled and
blinded by the fascination of those wondrous eyes. They reminded me of
what a materialist said of the portraits of Prudhon,--that they were
enough to make one believe in the immortality of the soul. Life
multiplied by feeling into a limitless dream of past and future was
mirrored in their clear depths; the questful gaze seemed reading the
significance of the one through the symbols of the other, and pondering
the lesson with sweetness of assent and ever-earnest longing for fuller
revelation.
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