His admiration for Rubens showed itself
in a sort of joy and brotherly fondness; he looked as if he would shake
hands with his pictures. What the company, which by degrees formed itself
round this silver-haired, bright-eyed, music-breathing, old man, took him
for, I cannot guess; there was probably not one there who knew him to be
that Ancient Mariner, who held people with his glittering eye, and
constrained them, like three years' children, to hear his tale. In the
midst of his speech, he turned to the right hand, where stood a very lovely
young woman, whose attention he had involuntarily arrested;--to her,
without apparently any consciousness of her being a stranger to him, he
addressed many remarks, although I must acknowledge they were couched in a
somewhat softer tone, as if he were soliciting her sympathy. He was,
verily, a gentle-hearted man at all times; but I never was in company with
him in my life, when the entry of a woman, it mattered not who, did not
provoke a dim gush of emotion, which passed like an infant's breath over
the mirror of his intellect.--ED.]
[Footnote 2:
"Figures shooting at a Target," belonging, I believe, to Lord Bandon.--ED.]
[Footnote 3: This belongs to Sir Robert Peel.--ED.
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