=_John Esten Cooke,[71] 1830-._=

From “Estcourt, or the Memoirs of a Virginia Gentleman.”

=_311._= THE PORTRAIT.

“I see you are prepared now,” said the painter; “the thought I endeavored to suggest has entered your mind, for I read the expression in your face like an open book.  Well, see if I have deceived you—­look!”

And as he spoke, the painter removed a green curtain from the frame of a picture, so arranged that the full light of the middle window fell upon it.

Estcourt almost cried out with astonishment.  Here, before him, as though ready to start from the canvas, was the woman who had been, his fate—­who had died long years before; there in the full blaze of light, he saw her who had thrown the shadow upon his existence, which still clouded it, fresh, softly smiling, alive almost on the speaking and eloquent canvas.  The blue eyes beamed with a tender and subdued sweetness, the delicate forehead, with its soft brown curls, rose airily above the perfectly arched brows, the innocent lips were half parted, and the portrait seemed almost ready to move from its frame, and descend, a living woman, into the apartment.

[Footnote 71:  Conspicuous among the younger writers of Virginia, of which State he is a native; author of many novels.]

* * * * *

=_312._= ASPECTS OF SUMMER.

The glory of the summer deepened and grew more intense, the foliage assumed a darker tint of emerald, the sky glowed with a more dazzling blue, and the songs of the busy harvesters came sad and slow, like the long, melancholy swell of pensive sighs across the hills and fields, dying away finally into the “harvest home,” which told that the golden grain would wave no more in the wind until another year.  The “harvest moon” looked down on bare fields now, and June was dead.  At last came August, the month of great white clouds and imperial sunsets, the crowning hours of the rich summer, soon to fade away into the yellow autumn, the month of reveries and dreams on the banks of shadowy streams, or beneath, the old majestic trees of silent forests.

* * * * *

=_Sarah A. Dorsey,[72] about 1835-._=

From “Lucia Dare.”

=_313._= SCENERY AND SOCIETY AT NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI.

The village of Natchez, under the hill, was clustered close to the water’s edge; the bluffs rose precipitously, garnished with pine trees, and locusts, and tufted grasses; the vista here terminated in Brown’s beautiful gardens, gay with flower-beds and closely-clipped hedges.  Far away over the river stretched the broad emerald plain of Louisiana, level with the stream, extending for many, many miles, its champaign checkered with groups of white plantation-houses, spotted with groves of trees, rich in autumnal beauty, glowing with crimson, gold, and green, softened by veils of long, gray moss.  This plain was dotted with lovely