so far
transcends the more active style in which it too often pleases us
moderns to glare from our gilt frames, "looking delightfully with all
our might, and staring violently at nothing;" costume and truth being
utterly outraged,--the _roturier's_ wife mapped in the ermine of the
duchess, and perchance dandling on her maternal lap what appears to be a
dancing dog in its professional finery, but which, on closer inspection,
turns out to be an imp of a child, made a fool of by its mother and
milliner; and my lady--in inadequate garments, and a pair of wings,
flourishing as some heathen divinity or abstract virtue! Look at those
girlish features, just mantling into fairest womanhood, with their sweet
serious look, exhibiting all the self-possession of simplicity; the
drapery and other accessories natural, and in perfect keeping with the
unpretending character of the whole; and then turn to some recent
"portrait of a lady," with what toleration you may. Contrast for one
moment that fine ancestral face, dignified and unmoved as the mighty
ocean slumbering in his strength, with the eager visage of one of the
latest "batch," (cooked, without much regard to the materials, for some
ministerial exigency,) who would appear to be standing in rampant
defence of his own brand-new coronet, emulative of the well-gilt lion
which supports that miracle of ingenuity rather than research, his
brightly emblazoned coat-of-arms; whose infinitude of charges and
quarterings do honour to the inventive genius of the Herald's Office,
and are enough to make the Rouge Dragon of three centuries ago claw out
the eyes of the modern functionary.

But, oh dear, dear! where are our ballads all this while? Drifted sadly
to leeward, we fear, according to a bad habit of ours, of letting any
breeze, from whatever point of the compass it may chance to blow, fill
our sails, and float us away before it, utterly unmindful of our
original purpose and destination. Thus have we, to the tune of an old
Hall and its garniture, sailed away from that which we were
aiming--trying to find out, and describe the peculiar fascination of our
loved old ballads; flattering ourselves, perhaps, that we were escaping
a difficulty which we feared to meet.

There is a quaint cheerfulness in them, toned down with a shade--the
shadow of a shade--of the most touching melancholy, effected, we can
scarcely tell how, by an exquisitely felicitous, though but slight
introduction of the min