I was sitting one morning in the library of a friend, looking over a valuable collection of works of art, made during a five years residence abroad, and listening to his animated description of scenes and places now become familiar to every one who reads at all, through the medium of “Jottings,” “Impressions,” and “Travels,” with which the press abounds.

Among the paintings were small copies in oil from Corregio, Guercino, Guido, and Rafaelle. There was a head of the latter, copied from a portrait painted by himself, and preserved in the Pitti Palace. With the slightest shade of hectic on the cheek, and the large unfathomable eyes looking into the great beyond, it was truly angelic in its loveliness. No wonder the man for whom nature had done so much, and who delighted in portraying the loftiest ideal beauty, no wonder he was called “divine!”

“Here,” said my friend, lovingly holding forth one of those inimitable creations, the beauty of which once seen, haunts us for a lifetime, “here is the far-famed ‘violin-player,’ the friend of Rafaelle. By the bye, I must tell you an anecdote I heard while abroad. There were two gentlemen sight-seers looking at pictures in the Vatican; one called to the other, who was at a short distance from him, ‘come, look at this, here is the celebrated violin-player.’ ‘Ah!’ said his companion, hastening toward him, ‘Paganini!’ I give you the story as I heard it related for truth, and as a somewhat laughable example of traveled ignorance.”

On one side of the room in which we were conversing, stood a picture apart from all the others, which soon engrossed my entire attention. A young man was represented reclining on a couch, and wrapped in a robe falling in loose folds about his person. His countenance bore the traces of suffering, but his dark eyes were filled with the light of love, and hope, as they looked up into the face of a young female bending mournfully at his side. On the head of this female the artist had lavished all the love of genius. With the sunny hair parted on the fair forehead, and the rich braids simply confined by a silver arrow—the dark eyes from which the tears seemed about to fall—the half-parted lips quivering as if from intense devotion—oh, it was transcendently lovely! The rest of the figure was in outline, but as vividly portrayed as some of those wonderful illustrations by Flaxman, in which a single line reveals a story.

“How is this,” said I, after gazing long and earnestly upon it, “how is this?—why is the picture unfinished. And who was the painter?”

“The tale,” replied my friend, “is a sad one; and if you are tired of looking at pictures and medals, I will relate it to you.”

“Not tired, yet I should like to hear the story to which this picture imparts an unusual interest.”

“You remember Paul Talbot, who left here some years ago to pursue the study of his art abroad.”

“I do, but that young man—sick—almost dying—I thought the face a familiar one; but can that be Paul?”

“Alas! yes—he is dead!” and my friend dashed away a tear as he spoke.

“Dead!” repeated I. “Paul Talbot dead! when did he die?”

“Not long before my return. Poor fellow! he endured much, and his career was an exemplification of what a man of untiring energy can accomplish under the most adverse circumstances.

“Soon after the birth of Paul, his father died, leaving little, save a mother’s love and a stainless reputation to his infant son.

“Mr. Talbot was a man of refined taste, and had collected round him objects of which an amateur might be justly proud—and thus from childhood had been fostered Paul’s love for the beautiful.

“Well educated and accomplished, Mrs. Talbot undertook the tuition of her child, and by giving lessons in drawing, painting miniatures on ivory, and small portraits in oil, kept herself and her boy above the pressure of want. Carefully she instilled into his tender mind those lofty principles of rectitude, of uncompromising integrity, and that child-like trust in the goodness of an overruling Providence, which sustained him through all the trials of after years.

“How holy, how powerful is the influence of a mother! The father may do much, but the mother can do more toward the formation of the mind, and the habits of early childhood. Exercising a power, silent, yet refreshing as the dews of heaven, her least word, her lightest look, sinks deep into the hearts of her children, and moulds them to her will. How many men have owed all that has made them great to the early teachings of a mother’s love! The father, necessarily occupied with business or professional duties, cannot give the needful attention to the minor shades in the character and disposition of his little ones, but the mother can encourage and draw out the latent energies of the timid, can check the bold, and exert an influence which may be felt not only through time, but through eternity.

“It was beautiful to see Paul Talbot standing by his mother’s side, with his childish gaze fixed upon her face, while receiving instruction from her lips, and to hear him as he grew in years, wishing he was a man, that he might be enabled to supply her every want.

“‘You know,’ he would exclaim, while his fine eyes was flashing with enthusiasm, ‘that I will be an artist; and, oh, mother, if I could, like Washington Allston, be a painter-poet; could I but paint such a head as that we saw in the Academy, and write such a book as Monaldi, then, mother, I would gain fame; orders would crowd upon me—and then—then we would go to Italy!’

“Go to Italy! of this he thought by day, and dreamed by night; and to accomplish this was the crowning ambition of the boy’s life.

“He was willing to toil, to endure privation and fatigue, could he but visit that land where heavenly beauty is depicted on the canvas, where the marble wants but the clasp of him of old to warm it into life, and where the soft blue of the sky, and the delicious atmosphere brooding over the glories of centuries gone by, make it the Mecca of the artist’s heart.

“But amid all these dreams of the future, all these ambitious aspirings of the gifted youth, death cast his dark shadow over that peaceful dwelling, and the mother, the guardian angel of the fatherless boy, was borne away to be a dweller in the silent land.

“With what passionate earnestness did he call upon her name. How did he long to lie down by her side. His mother! his mother! she had taught his lisping accents their first prayer; she had watched over his little bed, and moistened his parched lips when he was ill with fever—so ill, that his mother’s watchful tenderness was all, under God, that saved him from the grave. As he grew older, she had spoken to him, not like the boy he was in years, but like the man to whom she would impart her thoughts, and with whose mind of almost premature development, she might hold converse, and feel herself understood. And now, in his fifteenth year, when he was thinking of all that he could, nay, of all that he would do for her, his mother had died! Who can wonder that the boy pined, and sat upon her grave, and longed for her companionship, and wept as if his heart must break.

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