XXII
Portraits: Influence Shown in Matilda of Scotland; Philippa of Hainault; Victoria, of England; Mistress Ann Galloway; Mary Ball Washington; Abigail Smith Adams; Emma Hart Willard.
"Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;
So did'st thou travel on life's common way
In cheerful godliness."—Wordsworth.
The greatest human asset is character.
In the most ancient Book we find this inspired record: "Let us make man in our image," that is, in our Character. So man was made a little lower than the angels, and given dominion over the works of the Creator.
Shakespeare, in the thought-provoking forest of Arden, made this record:
"These trees shall be my books,
And in their barks my thoughts I'll character."
(Impress, would be a synonym for Character.)
Character is the compelling product of soul, the mercury within the hermetic bulb of life. It rises from the zero mark or falls below it according to the influences that warm or chill it. Character is the distinguishing mark of Cain, or the Christ; of the murderous club of selfish barbarism or the cross of renunciation, sacrifice and uplift. It is that spiritual effulgence that radiates from innocence to goodness, to greatness, to glory; or reversely, the inner light becomes smothered innocence to disobedience, to debasement, to death.
"What we shall be will mirror what we are;
And what we are reflects what once we were;
The thing God judges by is character."
Portraiture is one of the oldest forms of art. It is of historic, artistic, and anthropologic value, aside from family pride and interest. It has a value as a connecting link over long spaces of time in countries where there has been short-lived or sporadic art only. Kings, queens, courts, clergy, and beauties have had their physiognomies preserved in oils because they could afford to nourish their personal and political pride in that way, and sometimes because their admirers or constituents requested it.
Egypt and Assyria had great pride in royal sculptured portraiture. They
259
