with which I have been
painting. I wish I had some brilliant dyes. I wish, with all my
heart, I could take you back to that "Once upon a time" in which the
souls of our grandmothers delighted,--the time which Dr. Johnson sat up
all night to read about in "Evelina,"--the time when all the celestial
virtues, all the earthly graces were revealed in a condensed state to
man through the blue eyes and sumptuous linens of some Belinda Portman
or Lord Mortimer. None of your good-hearted, sorely-tempted villains
then! It made your hair stand on end only to read of them,--going
about perpetually seeking innocent maidens and unsophisticated old men
to devour. That was the time for holding up virtue and vice; no trouble
then in seeing which were sheep and which were goats! A person could
write a story with a moral to it, then, I should hope! People that were
born in those days had no fancy for going through the world with
half-and-half characters, such as we put up with; so Nature turned out
complete specimens of each class, with all the appendages of dress,
fortune, et cetera, chording decently. The heroine glides into life
full-charged with rank, virtues, a name three-syllabled, and a white
dress that never needs washing, ready to sail through dangers dire into
a triumphant haven of matrimony;--all the aristocrats have high
foreheads and cold blue eyes; all the peasants are old women,
miraculously grateful, in neat check aprons, or sullen-browed
insurgents planning revolts in caves.

Of course, I do not mean that these times are gone: they are alive (in
a modern fashion) in many places in the world; some of my friends have
described them in prose and verse. I only mean to say that I never was
there; I was born unlucky. I am willing to do my best, but I live in
the commonplace. Once or twice I have rashly tried my hand at dark
conspiracies, and women rare and radiant in Italian bowers; but I have
a friend who is sure to say, "Try and tell us about the butcher next
door, my dear." If I look up from my paper now, I shall be just as apt
to see our dog and his kennel as the white sky stained with blood and
Tyrian purple. I never saw a full-blooded saint or sinner in my life.
The coldest villain I ever knew was the only son of his mother, and she
a widow,--and a kinder son never lived. Doubtless there are people
capable of a love terrible in its strength; but I never knew such a
case that some one did not consider its exped