_"
Lady Bloomfield gives a very touching account of her first visit to the
widowed mistress, whom, nearly twenty years before, she had so gladly and
proudly served--for true service is in the spirit, though the act may be
limited to taking a part in a duet, or handing the daily bouquet. She
wrote: "The Queen is dreadfully changed--most sad, but with the gentlest,
most benevolent smile. Even when the tears rolled down her cheeks, she
tried to smile." I think it was about this time that the Queen presented
to our George Peabody her portrait, expressly painted for him, in
recognition of his more than princely munificence in the gift of model
lodging-houses to the London poor. It was a small portrait--enameled, I
believe. I do not think it was an idealized picture, though the pencil
was evidently guided by a delicate and reverential loyalty, "doing its
spiriting gently," in marking the tracings of time and sorrow. In a
description which I wrote at the tune of its exhibition in Philadelphia,
I said: "With the exception of a touching expression of habitual sadness,
this face is very like the one I looked down upon from the gallery of the
House of Lords fifteen years ago. There is the same roundness of outline,
only 'a little more so'--almost the same freshness of tints in the fair
complexion.
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