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FAMILY PORTRAITS.

We have no family pictures, Prue and I, only a
portrait of my grandmother hangs upon our parlor
wall. It was taken at least a century ago, and represents
the venerable lady, whom I remember in my
childhood in spectacles and comely cap, as a young
and blooming girl.

She is sitting upon an old-fashioned sofa, by the
side of a prim aunt of hers, and with her back to the
open window. Her costume is quaint, but handsome.
It consists of a cream-colored dress made
high in the throat, ruffled around the neck, and over
the bosom and the shoulders. The waist is just
under her shoulders, and the sleeves are tight, tighter
than any of our coat sleeves, and also ruffled at the
wrist. Around the plump and rosy neck, which I
remember as shrivelled and sallow, and hidden under
a decent lace handkerchief, hangs, in the picture,

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a necklace of large ebony beads. There are two
curls upon the forehead, and the rest of the hair
flows away in ringlets down the neck.

The hands hold an open book: the eyes look up
from it with tranquil sweetness, and, through the
open window behind, you see a quiet landscape—a
hill, a tree, the glimpse of a river, and a few peaceful
summer clouds.

Often in my younger days, when my grandmother
sat by the fire, after dinner, lost in thought—perhaps
remembering the time when the picture was really
a portrait—I have curiously compared her wasted
face with the blooming beauty of the girl, and tried
to detect the likeness. It was strange how the
resemblance would sometimes start out: how, as I
gazed and gazed upon her old face, age disappeared
before my eager glance, as snow melts in the sunshine,
revealing the flowers of a forgotten spring.

It was touching to see my grandmother steal
quietly up to her portrait, on still summer mornings
when every one had left the house,—and I, the
only child, played, disregarded,—and look at it wistfully
and long.

She held her hand over her eyes to shade them
from the light that streamed in at the window, and
I have seen her stand at least a quarter of an hour
gazing steadfastly at the picture. She said nothing,

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she made no motion, she shed no tear, but when
she turned away there was always a pensive sweetness
in her face that made it not less lovely than
the face of her youth.

I have learned since, what her thoughts must have
been—how that long, wistful glance annihilated
time and space, how forms and faces unknown to
any other, rose in sudden resurrection around her—
how she loved, suffered, struggled and conquered
again; how many a jest that I shall never hear,
how many a game that I shall never play, how
many a song that I shall never sing, were all renewed
and remembered as my grandmother contemplated
her picture.

I often stand, as she stood, gazing earnestly at the
picture, so long and so silently, that Prue looks up
from her work and says she shall be jealous of that
beautiful belle, my grandmother, who yet makes
her think more kindly of those remote old times.

“Yes, Prue, and that is the charm of a family portrait.”

“Yes, again; but,” says Titbottom when he hears
the remark, “how, if one's grandmother were a
shrew, a termagant, a virago?”

“Ah! in that case—” I am compelled to say, while
Prue looks up again, half archly, and I add gravely—
“you, for instance, Prue.”

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Then Titbottom smiles one of his sad smiles, and
we change the subject.

Yet, I am always glad when Minim Sculpin, our
neighbor, who knows that my opportunities are
few, comes to ask me to step round and see the
family portraits.

The Sculpins, I think, are a very old family.
Titbottom says they date from the deluge. But I
thought people of English descent preferred to stop
with William the Conqueror, who came from France.

Before going with Minim, I always fortify myself
with a glance at the great family Bible, in which
Adam, Eve, and the patriarchs, are indifferently
well represented.

“Those are the ancestors of the Howards, the
Plantagenets, and the Montmorencis,” says Prue,
surprising me with her erudition. “Have you any
remoter ancestry, Mr. Sculpin?” she asks Minim,
who only smiles compassionately upon the dear
woman, while I am buttoning my coat.

Then we step along the street, and I am conscious
of trembling a little, for I feel as if I were
going to court. Suddenly we are standing before
the range of portraits.

“This,” says Mimim, with unction, “is Sir Solomon
Sculpin, the founder of the family.”

“Famous for what?” I ask, respectfully.

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“For founding the family,” replies Minim gravely,
and I have sometimes thought a little severely.

“This,” he says, pointing to a dame in hoops
and diamond stomacher, “this is Lady Sheba Sculpin.”

“Ah! yes. Famous for what?” I inquire.

“For being the wife of Sir Solomon.”

Then, in order, comes a gentleman in a huge,
curling wig, looking indifferently like James the
Second, or Louis the Fourteenth, and holding a
scroll in his hand.

“The Right Honorable Haddock Sculpin, Lord
Privy Seal, etc., etc.”

A delicate beauty hangs between, a face fair, and
loved, and lost, centuries ago—a song to the eye—
a poem to the heart—the Aurelia of that old society.

“Lady Dorothea Sculpin, who married young
Lord Pop and Cock, and died prematurely in Italy.”

Poor Lady Dorothea! whose great grandchild, in
the tenth remove, died last week, an old man of
eighty!

Next the gentle lady hangs a fierce figure, flourishing
a sword, with an anchor embroidered on his
coat-collar, and thunder and lightning, sinking ships,
flames and tornadoes in the background.

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“Rear Admiral Sir Shark Sculpin, who fell in
the great action off Madagascar.”

So Minim goes on through the series, brandishing
his ancestors about my head, and incontinently
knocking me into admiration.

And when we reach the last portrait and our
own times, what is the natural emotion? Is it not
to put Minim against the wall, draw off at him
with my eyes and mind, scan him, and consider his
life, and determine how much of the Right Honorable
Haddock's integrity, and the Lady Dorothy's
loveliness, and the Admiral Shark's valor, reappears
in the modern man? After all this proving and
refining, ought not the last child of a famous race to
be its flower and epitome? Or, in the case that he
does not chance to be so, is it not better to conceal
the family name?

I am told, however, that in the higher circles of
society, it is better not to conceal the name, however
unworthy the man or woman may be who
bears it. Prue once remonstrated with a lady about
the marriage of a lovely young girl with a cousin of
Minim's; but the only answer she received was,
“Well, he may not be a perfect man, but then he
is a Sculpin,” which consideration apparently gave
great comfort to the lady's mind.

But even Prue grants that Minim has some

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reason for his pride. Sir Solomon was a respectable
man, and Sir Shark a brave one; and the Right
Honorable Haddock a learned one; the Lady Sheba
was grave and gracious in her way; and the smile
of the fair Dorothea lights with soft sunlight those
long-gone summers. The filial blood rushes more
gladly from Minim's heart as he gazes; and admiration
for the virtues of his kindred inspires and
sweetly mingles with good resolutions of his own.

Time has its share, too, in the ministry, and the
influence. The hills beyond the river lay yesterday,
at sunset, lost in purple gloom; they receded into
airy distances of dreams and fäery; they sank softly
into night, the peaks of the delectable mountains.
But I knew, as I gazed enchanted, that the
hills, so purple-soft of seeming, were hard, and gray,
and barren in the wintry twilight; and that in the
distance was the magic that made them fair.

So, beyond the river of time that flows between,
walk the brave men and the beautiful women of
our ancestry, grouped in twilight upon the shore.
Distance smooths away defects, and, with gentle
darkness, rounds every form into grace. It steals
the harshness from their speech, and every word becomes
a song. Far across the gulf that ever widens,
they look upon us with eyes whose glance is tender,
and which light us to success. We acknowledge

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our inheritance; we accept our birthright; we own
that their careers have pledged us to noble action.
Every great life is an incentive to all other lives;
but when the brave heart, that beats for the world,
loves us with the warmth of private affection, then
the example of heroism is more persuasive, because
more personal.

This is the true pride of ancestry. It is founded
in the tenderness with which the child regards the
father, and in the romance that time sheds upon
history.

“Where be all the bad people buried?” asks
every man, with Charles Lamb, as he strolls among
the rank grave-yard grass, and brushes it aside to
read of the faithful husband, and the loving wife,
and the dutiful child.

He finds only praise in the epitaphs, because the
human heart is kind; because it yearns with wistful
tenderness after all its brethren who have passed
into the cloud, and will only speak well of the departed.
No offence is longer an offence when the
grass is green over the offender. Even faults then
seem characteristic and individual. Even Justice
is appeased when the drop falls. How the old
stories and plays teem with the incident of the
duel in which one gentleman falls, and, in dying,
forgives and is forgiven. We turn the page with a

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tear. How much better had there been no offence,
but how well that death wipes it out.

It is not observed in history that families improve
with time. It is rather discovered that the whole
matter is like a comet, of which the brightest part
is the head; and the tail, although long and luminous,
is gradually shaded into obscurity.

Yet, by a singular compensation, the pride of
ancestry increases in the ratio of distance. Adam
was valiant, and did so well at Poictiers that he
was knighted—a hearty, homely country gentleman,
who lived humbly to the end. But young
Lucifer, his representative in the twentieth remove,
has a tinder-like conceit because old Sir Adam was
so brave and humble. Sir Adam's sword is hung
up at home, and Lucifer has a box at the opera.
On a thin finger he has a ring, cut with a match
fizzling, the crest of the Lucifers. But if he should
be at a Poictiers, he would run away. Then history
would be sorry—not only for his cowardice, but for
the shame it brigs upon old Adam's name.

So, if Minim Sculpin is a bad young man, he not
only shames himself, but he disgraces that illustrious
line of ancestors, whose characters are known.
His neighbor, Mudge, has no pedigree of this kind,
and when he reels homeward, we do not suffer the
sorrow of any fair Lady Dorothy in such a

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descendant—we pity him for himself alone. But genius
and power are so imperial and universal, that when
Minim Sculpin falls, we are grieved not only for
him, but for that eternal truth and beauty which
appeared in the valor of Sir Shark, and the loveliness
of Lady Dorothy. His neighbor Mudge's
grandfather may have been quite as valorous and
virtuous as Sculpin's; but we know of the one, and
we do not know of the other.

Therefore, Prue, I say to my wife, who has, by
this time, fallen as soundly asleep as if I had been
preaching a real sermon, do not let Mrs. Mudge feel
hurt, because I gaze so long and earnestly upon the
portrait of the fair Lady Sculpin, and, lost in dreams,
mingle in a society which distance and poetry immortalize.

But let the love of the family portraits belong to
poetry and not to politics. It is good in the one
way, and bad in the other.

The sentiment of ancestral pride is an integral part
of human nature. Its organization in institutions is
the real object of enmity to all sensible men, because
it is a direct preference of derived to original power,
implying a doubt that the world at every period is
able to take care of itself.

The family portraits have a poetic significance;
but he is a brave child of the family who dares to

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show them. They all sit in passionless and austere
judgment upon himself. Let him not invite us to
see them, until he has considered whether they are
honored or disgraced by his own career—until he
has looked in the glass of his own thought and scanned
his own proportions.

The family portraits are like a woman's diamonds;
they may flash finely enough before the world, but
she herself trembles lest their lustre eclipse her eyes.
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

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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.

As we look at these two, we must own that noblesse
oblige in a sense sweeter than we knew, and
be glad when young Sculpin invites us to see the
family portraits. Could a man be named Sidney,
and not be a better man, or Milton, and be a churl?

But it is apart from any historical association that
I like to look at the family portraits. The Sculpins
were very distinguished heroes, and judges, and
founders of families; but I chiefly linger upon their
pictures, because they were men and women. Their
portraits remove the vagueness from history, and
give it reality. Ancient valor and beauty cease to

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be names and poetic myths, and become facts. I
feel that they lived, and loved, and suffered in those
old days. The story of their lives is instantly full
of human sympathy in my mind, and I judge them
more gently, more generously.

Then I look at those of us who are the spectators
of the portraits. I know that we are made of the
same flesh and blood, that time is preparing us to
be placed in his cabinet and upon canvass, to be
curiously studied by the grandchildren of unborn
Prues. I put out my hands to grasp those of my
fellows around the pictures. “Ah! friends, we live
not only for ourselves. Those whom we shall never
see, will look to us as models, as counsellors. We
shall be speechless then. We shall only look at
them from the canvass, and cheer or discourage them
by their idea of our lives and ourselves. Let us so
look in the portrait, that they shall love our memories—
that they shall say, in turn, `they were kind
and thoughtful, those queer old ancestors of ours;
let us not disgrace them.' ”

If they only recognize us as men and women like
themselves, they will be the better for it, and the
family portraits will be family blessings.

This is what my grandmother did. She looked
at her own portrait, at the portrait of her youth,
with much the same feeling that I remember Prue

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as she was when I first saw her; with much the
same feeling that I hope our grandchildren will
remember us.

Upon those still summer mornings, though she
stood withered and wan in a plain black silk gown,
a close cap, and spectacles, and held her shrunken
and blue-veined hand to shield her eyes, yet, as she
gazed with that long and longing glance, upon the
blooming beauty that had faded from her form forever,
she recognized under that flowing hair and
that rosy cheek—the immortal fashions of youth
and health—and beneath those many ruffles and
that quaint high waist, the fashions of the day—
the same true and loving woman. If her face was
pensive as she turned away, it was because truth
and love are, in their essence, forever young; and
it is the hard condition of nature that they cannot
always appear so.