much he is indebted to the long possession and study of so invaluable an original for these traits, moulded by his genius into so many admirable representations of the loved, the venerable, and the honored, both living and dead." Another friend of mine, in exploring the more humble class of boarding-houses in one of our large commercial towns, in search of an unfortunate relation, found himself, while expecting the landlady, absorbed in a portrait on the walls of a dingy back-parlor. The furniture was of the most common description. A few smutched and faded annuals, half-covered with dust, lay on the centre-table, beside an old-fashioned astral lamp, a cracked porcelain vase of wax-flowers, a yellow satin pincushion embroidered with tarnished gold-lace, and an album of venerable hue filled with hyperbolic apostrophes to the charms of some ancient beauty; which, with the dilapidated window-curtains, the obsolete sideboard, the wooden effigy of a red-faced man with a spyglass under his arm, and the cracked alabaster clock-case on the mantel, all bespoke an impoverished establishment, so devoid of taste that the beautiful and artistic portrait seemed to have found its way there by a miracle. It represented a young and _spirituelle_ woman, in the costume, so elegant in material and formal in mode, which Copley has immortalized; in this instance, however, there was a French look about the coiffure and robe. The eyes were bright with intelligence chastened by sentiment, the features at once delicate and spirited, and altogether the picture was one of those visions of blended youth, grace, sweetness, and intellect, from which the fancy instinctively infers a tale of love, genius, or sorrow, according to the mood of the spectator. Subdued by his melancholy errand and discouraged by a long and vain search, my friend, whose imagination was quite as excitable as his taste was correct, soon wove a romance around the picture. It was evidently not the work of a novice; it was as much out of place in this obscure and inelegant domicil, as a diamond set in filigree, or a rose among pigweed. How came it there? who was the original? what her history and her fate? Her parentage and her nurture must have been refined; she must have inspired love in the chivalric; perchance this was the last relic of an illustrious exile, the last memorial of a princely house.