Originally published in The National Magazine (National Magazine Company) #1 (Nov 1856).
This scene of Mr. Horsley's, like all good pictures of character, tells its story at once. If we add a line or two of comment, it is by no means to explain the artist's design, but rather for the pleasure of telling him how thoroughly we perceive it. We are quite in his secret. We have read off his telegraph. We like to give him back in words the meanings that he has given to us in forms.
In the female figure we see youthful beauty conscious of her power, and willing to take out her full rights in the receipt of admiration. She sits full in the sun; and beside her in the shadow stands the jealous cavalier,—perhaps the suitor to whom some "flinty-hearted" father, for considerations of family or fortune, has assigned her. The sense of property over the reluctant damsel, rather than in her, is especially given in the dogged attitude and apprehensive look of the aged lover. He guards her like a sentinel; nor can any nearness of position bring him one whit closer to her fancy. See how it strives, through her downcast shrouded glance, to evade the consciousness of his presence. The half-averted head, the suspended action of the hand, well convey the feeling that the suspicious knight, so far from being the companion of her ordinary moods, is but the interruption to them.
Let him but pass from her side, and in her first sense of relief she may even welcome the magnificent lady-killer who advances from the terrace. See with what easy assurance he lounges forward,—the head jauntily thrown back, the hand dallying with his frill! He may have some slight tribute of admiration to offer; but it is a mere nothing compared with that which he expects to receive. His nonchalance is effectively contrasted with the vigilance of the anxious custodian,—ready as the latter is to detect, to resent, to do whatever is dignified and desperate.
The costume and the accessories of the picture mark its date,—that of Charles II. The whole tone of the work is that of comedy,—of the comedy which suggests without obtruding a moral. How interest can warp the natural tendencies of life, and how those thwarted tendencies are prone to waste themselves upon emptiness and vanity, may be plainly read in this piquant delineation. As we have said, it depicts the life of a past period. We should be glad to think its lesson was no longer applicable.