“And yesterday’s too,” added Anna. “I have felt like a different person since I saw Westminster Abbey.”
“I hope you will find the same influence from the natural beauties of Richmond, and the delights of the Dulwich gallery; ever remembering that moderation is especially necessary in pleasures of taste. If you went so often from one of these places to the other as to leave no interval for the serious business of life, there would soon be an end alike of enjoyment and improvement. It is because I trust these pleasures will furnish you with serious occupation, that I offer them to you. If I thought they would afford you merely subjects for talk, and reverie, and drawing, I would carry you away from them all to-morrow.”
“Thought and feeling—deep study—purified tastes: these ought to be ministered to by innocent pleasures,” said Mary, thoughtfully.
“No pleasures can be innocent which do not thus minister,” observed her father; “and I trust, my dears, that you will so rouse your faculties, as to make the most of your present opportunities.” Here he addressed Anna particularly. “Observe keenly, and lay yourself open to the full relish of every beautiful object which is presented to you; and refer it perpetually to your best ideas and feelings. So, in some far distant place or time, in the midst of the sea, or after the lapse of years, alone among strangers, or on a sick bed, the bright and beautiful objects which are now new to you, will come, like familiar friends, to cheer you, and help your gratitude for the blessings which have strewed your path of life.”
After a pause, Mary asked if it could be supposed that many persons cultivated their tastes with such an object as this.
“I trust that many do,” was the reply; “but we must not suppose that the greater number who spend their lives in flitting from pleasure to pleasure, have any genuine taste to cultivate. The influence of all objects depends mainly upon the sort of mind which is exposed to it; and there may be as wide a difference in the innocence of purpose of two persons who enter the Dulwich gallery at the same moment, as between the state of mind of the Christian who enters a church to worship, and the wretch who goes to scoff. The one may carry away from this sanctuary of taste, a mind softened and refreshed; while the other is burdened with an additional account of time wasted, and levity encouraged. And now, whether these thoughts be old or new to you, they are such as you may carry into private. So good-night, and quiet rest to you.”
While Anna listened to her father it was ever her full intention to adopt the principles to the truth of which she assented; but her power over her own thoughts was too far gone to be easily regained. Instead of keenly observing the new objects which were placed before her, she was commonly lost in dreams which might just as well have been dreamed at A——. The advantages which she knew she could only enjoy for a few weeks were neglected, through the same pernicious habit. She sat for hours with her pencil in her hand, and her drawing-board before her, without putting in a stroke; and she commonly spent the hour when Signor Elvi was with them in pondering his fate, while he himself was enjoying the facility with which he could impress her sister’s more healthful mind. She carried away from every new scene feeble impressions, old ideas, and useless or morbid feelings; and when the last day of their stay in London had arrived, she might have seen, if she had been disposed to observe, that her father looked at her with grief in his countenance; and that when Signor Elvi returned her mournful farewell, there was more of compassion than respect in his words and manner. Dead as she was to external things, she could not but feel that she was and must be regarded a useless thing.
Mary had arranged with her father the plan for their voyage and abode abroad: Mary had received and dismissed their various masters: Mary had made their acknowledgments to their many kind friends who had noticed and assisted them. As to their musical accomplishments, every body knew that no comparison could be drawn; but Mary’s portfolio was that to which the drawing-master referred Mr. Byerley with pride and satisfaction; and with her did their foreign friend converse, in his own language, upon the subjects nearest his heart. This was too mortifying to be borne with patience; and in the midst of all her other business, Mary was obliged to try to soothe her sister’s pettish temper, and to conceal its infirmities, if possible, from her father. To do this entirely was, however, impossible.
“I know how much you are engaged,” said he, on the morning when they were to depart; “but I have omitted one thing which must be done, though I cannot do it myself. Which of you will write a letter of business for me?”
“Oh! the woman of business, to be sure,” said Anna, waving her hand at Mary. “When you have a letter of a different sort—to Signor Elvi for instance—to be written, let me do it; but I defer to Mary in matters of business.”