Page:Female Portrait Gallery.pdf/83

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MARY AVENEL.
159

or lofty standard of excellence, but among a people who take pride in the past. It is the past that re deems and elevates the present. The good worked from this feeling is beautifully shown, as calling out the kindly sense with us. In Elspeth Glendinning it takes the shape of enduring hospitality, and affectionate respect to the unfortunate. In Tibb Tackets, the bower-woman, by increased devotion to the fortunes of a family fallen from its high estate. By the by, how perfect are these two, each in her way. What can be more natural than the good dame's ejaculation, when her maternal pride and anxiety are awakened to the utmost by her son's summons, to appear before the "Abbot"—"His will be done; but an' he had but on his Sunday hose!" What more true to life than the way in which the bower-woman takes art and part in all the former glories of the family. It is the same spirit that animates Constant in his preface to the memoirs of Napoleon. His valet has some share in his victories, or as he himself most poetically intimates, "si je ne suis pas la rose j’ai reçu pres d’elle." The episode, too, of Katharine, the ill-fated mistress of Julian Avenel, is the most deeply pathetic incident that ever turned on "trusting affection ill-requited." The remorse subdued by love, the painful timidity, the desire to please, constantly checked by the dread that its power is over, the sense of shame and degradation,