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    sion . Her bonnet was an old but fine black chip , with a long poke over the face . Beneath it appeared a very clean and white cap ,, double frilled and fluted . Through her long yellow mittens came fingers that seemed to have power enough , but not to have had passion enou gh , to grasp the wand of Medea . Her gown was one of those antique , large-patterned chintzes which always

    look so stately . There were in it colossal roses , and all sorts of flowers ; or , rather , forms which were no sorts of flowers , while yet they claimed affinity with the fossil , antediluvian or antemosaic-creation outlines of vegetable being , in the days when lady-fern grew ten feet high , and large in proportion . A common blue and white spotted kerchief was folded over her neck

    and around her throat passed a narrow slip of black velvet . An apron was tied about her waist , and hung down in front , as white as the driven snow . It was , altogether , the garb of one who was made to be wanted ,, in that most peculiar and yet most common manner . What is to follow , thought I ; for how , when , where , by whom , or for what , Mrs . Thomson was wanted , did not appear . She stepped calmly forwards , towards the front of the

    coach . The third step took her out of my sight . I was fixed in the further corner . In a few seconds she reappe ^/^ d , stepping back to her former position . There was no agitation , no grief , in her manner . She was not parting with any one needful to her . There was no proud complacency in her air . She had not been exercising the irtfluence of a superior to minister to sorrow . She had been wanted . She was there . That was all . She was

    ready to be wanted again ; yet not impatient for it . Whenever , or wherever it might be , she was equal to it , and without effort . Her hairless brow , which rose above the eyebrows like a mountain above the zone of vegetation , bent slightly forward with a strictly mechanical movement towards the coach-box , and as if in obedience to her fiat , the coach went on . The horses sprang not forward with a jerk ,, but the scene of a theatre seemed to close on the tableau vivant of Mrs . Thomson , the cad , the

    coaches , the passengers , the porters , the people , and the Elephant and Castle . I am the richer and the wiser . I have added a picture to my gallery , and one the colours of which will not fade . The reader may see little in my poor copy of it ; I cannot help that ; but the orig inal is worthy of Gerard Dow , or Rembrandt , or Donrinichino . I shall often study it . There is no study like that of

    a fine old painting . One ' s eyes fix themselves upon it , and drink in wisdom without words . And I have gained a proposition as well as a picture . I cannot affirm , with Socrates , that the only thing I know is ., that I know nothing . It would not be true . I know that Mrs . Thomson is wanted . That is a step towards universal truth . I like the bareness of the proposition . It is not frittered away b y details or circumstantials . Sometimes it

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    284 Mr 8 . Thomson , you are wanted .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 284, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/52/