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THE LADYS BOOK.

Written for the Lady's Book.

THE PORTRAIT.

Few of a public exhibition of paintings are of less general interest than those which are marked on the catalogue, "Portrait of a Lady"—"Portrait of a Gentleman"—and this too, though Sully or Neagle should have laid the colours on the canvass. Perhaps "the Portrait" which fronts this article, will of itself attract little attention beyond what is due the successful exertion of the artists: though to me, there are circumstances connected therewith, which call up mournful reflections whenever my eye rests upon it.

Death had taken from me an only child—the solitary lab of my bosom—them nurstling wherewith I solaced misfortune, and upon which I built the ideal fabric of earthly comfort——Time tempers grief, and the conventional usages of society forbid its protracted indulgence. But I was wont to sit upon the little mound that had been raised over him, and indulge in feelings, which those who have not lost an only child cannot know, and which those who have, will allow are undefinable. It is not the absorbsion of grief—it is not the indulgence of tears—they are the common consequences of common deprivations. But to kneel down upon the swelling hillock, to shut out the world and all its painful, sickening realities, to look through the incrustation of this life, and in the thronged population of the grave; to mingle with them, join spirit to spirit, to press again to the widowed bosom the object of its joy; to throw back the clustering locks, and plant a kiss on the polished forehead of the beloved; to inhale once more from his lip the fragrant breath; to feel him nestling to the bosom, to clasp him closer and closer to the heart, and not once loose the melancholy consciousness that he is not there. To find the soul, while in the enjoyment of its ideal bliss, alive to the dread reality—and uttering, from the consciousness of its self-deception, the language of the smitten monarch of Israel, "I shall go to him but he shall not return to me."

tures of which were regular, but grief and its recent indulgence were too conspicuous for beauty.

When the female had departed, I rose, and, anxious to know whose manes were blessed with the tears of such a mourner, I read the headstone; and, as I was about to pass on, I discovered at the side of the grave a small white object—taking it up, I saw that it was a miniature Portrait of the female who had just left the place; it was without a frame, having apparently been set as an obverse to that which the original had recently so passionately kissed.

My first intention was to hasten out of the yard, and restore the portrait to its owner if I could find her. But recollecting that such a restoration would be painful to both of us; as conveying to her the assurance that I had been witness of her emotion, and certain that I could ascertain her residence by inquiring as to the individual at whose grave she had come to weep, I deferred until a more suitable opportunity the execution of my design.

If the spirit, separated from the gross fetters of flesh; is allowed to look down upon the things of life, to mingle an unobserved spectator in scenes where once it had joy as an actor; if it is touched with human sympathy, and is allowed to rejoice in the fond devotion of those with whom it sojourned in mortality; if it can feel the sensations that belong to this world, how blest must have been the disembodied spirit of Worthington in pure, the heart-engendered sigh that Amelia had breathed over his grave. All that there is pure in affection; all that there is sincere in woman's deep, undying devotion; all that there is rich in the breathings of her undivided love; all that is holy in the firstlings of her heart's deep