Or those faint beams in which this hill is dressed
After the sun's remove."
So sang Vaughan, a poet of the Restoration; and if one attempts it one can feel with him, that it is a pleasure and a rest to think of, and cultivate affection for, those of our family who belong to the past.
In many an old mansion the story goes that an ancestor or ancestress walks there, is to be seen occasionally between the glimpses of the moon visiting the old house, and generally as foretoken of some event intimately concerning the family. Such a story is common enough. We think that possibly these ancient ghosts may reappear to acquaint themselves how we are getting on, but it never occurs to us to visit them, and walk in spirit their desolate region, and cheer them with a kindly expression, and a word of good-will. Well, I think that a set of family portraits does help one to that, does link us somehow to these dead forefathers, and serves as a vehicle of mental communication between us.
Then, again, the family scamp is of use. We had one in our family. I am thankful to say we do not inherit his wild blood, as he died unmarried. He sold the bulk of the ancestral estates, and got rid of everything he could get rid of. But then—since his death he has stood as a warning to each successive generation. The children go before his picture and hear the story of his misdeeds, and it sinks into their hearts, and they learn frugality. They go over the acres that would have been theirs, but for the scamp; they see the old mansion, a quadrangle, which they would have had a dance about, had it not been for the scamp; they know that there are gaps in the series of family portraiture, because the pictures were sold by the scamp; and so they grow up with great fear in their minds lest they also should by any chance be even as he; and so the scamp is of good after all.
CHAPTER X.
THE VILLAGE MUSICIAN.
