as befitted a popular leader.  The ancient lady of Sir William Phipps eyed them from the wall in ruff and farthingale, an imperious old dame not unsuspected of witchcraft.  John Winslow, then a very young man, wore the expression of warlike enterprise which long afterward made him a distinguished general.  Their personal friends were recognized at a glance.  In most of the pictures the whole mind and character were brought out on the countenance and concentrated into a single look; so that, to speak paradoxically, the originals hardly resembled themselves so strikingly as the portraits did.

Among these modern worthies there were two old bearded saints who had almost vanished into the darkening canvas.  There was also a pale but unfaded Madonna who had perhaps been worshipped in Rome, and now regarded the lovers with such a mild and holy look that they longed to worship too.

“How singular a thought,” observed Walter Ludlow, “that this beautiful face has been beautiful for above two hundred years!  Oh, if all beauty would endure so well!  Do you not envy her, Elinor?”

“If earth were heaven, I might,” she replied.  “But, where all things fade, how miserable to be the one that could not fade!”

“This dark old St. Peter has a fierce and ugly scowl, saint though he be,” continued Walter; “he troubles me.  But the Virgin looks kindly at us.”

“Yes, but very sorrowfully, methinks,” said Elinor.

The easel stood beneath these three old pictures, sustaining one that had been recently commenced.  After a little inspection they began to recognize the features of their own minister, the Rev. Dr. Colman, growing into shape and life, as it were, out of a cloud.

“Kind old man!” exclaimed Elinor.  “He gazes at me as if he were about to utter a word of paternal advice.”

“And at me,” said Walter, “as if he were about to shake his head and rebuke me for some suspected iniquity.  But so does the original.  I shall never feel quite comfortable under his eye till we stand before him to be married.”

They now heard a footstep on the floor, and, turning, beheld the painter, who had been some moments in the room and had listened to a few of their remarks.  He was a middle-aged man with a countenance well worthy of his own pencil.  Indeed, by the picturesque though careless arrangement of his rich dress, and perhaps because his soul dwelt always among painted shapes, he looked somewhat like a portrait himself.  His visitors were sensible of a kindred between the artist and his works, and felt as if one of the pictures had stepped from the canvas to salute them.

Walter Ludlow, who was slightly known to the painter, explained the object of their visit.  While he spoke a sunbeam was falling athwart his figure and Elinor’s with so happy an effect that they also seemed living pictures of youth and beauty gladdened by bright fortune.  The artist was evidently struck.