"It lives in your memory. That is a pleasure, time nor distance diminishes."
"I am not satisfied with this selfish hoarding. A voice is ever urging me on,—'Create! create!' it cries; and while my pencil moves, I am a creator; exulting in the pictures graven upon my soul, as no parent ever joyed over a beloved child. 'They are mine—mine!' I repeat in an ecstacy. I have wept above—almost worshipped them! Then comes the chill, grey light of critical reason, as when you awake at morning, and see things as they are: the soul-pictures are beauteous still:—my copy the veriest daub!"
"The keenness of your disappointment is an augury of success. The lithography is perfect—you must not despond at the failure of one proof-impression. Your mortification is a greater triumph than the complacency with which a mediocre genius surveys his work."
"You remember Sheridan's maiden speech," said Charley.
"I have read of Demosthenes'," replied Lynn.
"Sheridan's was a similar case. He was hooted at for his presumption; his first and second attempts were wretched: and his friends advised him to retire from the rostrum forever. 'Never!' said he, striking his breast. 'It is here, and shall come out!'"
"A glorious 'coming out' it was!" responded Ida. "What do you say now?"—to Lynn.
"That it is here!" returning her bright look. "Was ever man more blessed in his friends? More fortunate than Adam, I take my guardian angels with me, from the Paradise I leave to-morrow."
"You must array one in a less questionable shape, if you would have men admit his angelic relationship," said Charley, with a grimace. "What are you looking at?"
Lynn did not reply. They were upon a hill; and some object in the valley beneath fastened his gaze. The pensive cast of his features bordered upon gloom, as they neared it. Ida saw only a graceful knoll, bounded, except towards the west, by a chain of more imposing eminences. A monarch oak stood in isolated sovereignty upon its summit; it had shaded a dwelling, for one chimney yet remained; and the sickly herbage of the slope was not the produce of a virgin soil. Lynn stopped. Not a word was spoken, his eyes were too full of tender sadness; the man—not the artist, looked from them.