It is difficult to resist the tendency to
depend upon those portraits, and to enjoy vicariously through them a
high consideration. But, after all, what girl is complimented when you
curiously regard her because her mother was beautiful? What attenuated
consumptive, in whom self-respect is yet unconsumed, delights in your
respect for him, founded in honor for his stalwart ancestor?
No man worthy the name rejoices in any homage which his own effort and
character have not deserved. You intrinsically insult him when you
make him the scapegoat of your admiration for his ancestor. But when
his ancestor is his accessory, then your homage would flatter
Jupiter. All that Minim Sculpin does by his own talent is the more
radiantly set and ornamented by the family fame. The imagination is
pleased when Lord John Russell is Premier of England and a whig,
because the great Lord William Russell, his ancestor, died in England
for liberty.
In the same way Minim's sister Sara adds to her own grace the sweet
memory of the Lady Dorothy. When she glides, a sunbeam, through that
quiet house, and in winter makes summer by her presence; when she sits
at the piano, singing in the twilight, or stands leaning against the
Venus in the corner of the room--herself more graceful--then, in
glancing from her to the portrait of the gentle Dorothy, you feel that
the long years between them have been lighted by the same sparkling
grace, and shadowed by the same pensive smile--for this is but one
Sara and one Dorothy, out of all that there are in the world.
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