Than in a lasting name;
And much a greater rate would give
For happiness than fame.

"THEODOSIUS. 1700."

When I look at these faint records of gallantry and tenderness; when I
contemplate the fading portraits of these beautiful girls, and think,
too, that they have long since bloomed, reigned, grown old, died, and
passed away, and with them all their graces, their triumphs, their
rivalries, their admirers; the whole empire of love and pleasure in
which they ruled--"all dead, all buried, all forgotten," I find a cloud
of melancholy stealing over the present gaieties around me. I was
gazing, in a musing mood, this very morning, at the portrait of the lady
whose husband was killed abroad, when the fair Julia entered the
gallery, leaning on the arm of the captain. The sun shone through the
row of windows on her as she passed along, and she seemed to beam out
each time into brightness, and relapse into shade, until the door at the
bottom of the gallery closed after her. I felt a sadness of heart at
the idea that this was an emblem of her lot: a few more years of
sunshine and shade, and all this life, and loveliness, and enjoyment,
will have ceased, and nothing be left to commemorate this beautiful
being but one more perishable portrait; to awaken, perhaps, the trite
speculations of some future loiterer, like myself, when I and my
scribblings shall have lived through our brief existence, and been
forgotten.

[Illustration: Julia and the Captain in the Gallery]