roturier's

Updated: May 18, 2025

Here could we linger in genial meditation, while from the dark pannelled walls look down upon us lovely countenances of those who, centuries ago, have called this home portraits whose calm, meek dignity so far transcends the more active style in which it too often pleases us moderns to glare from our gilt frames, "looking delightfully with all our might, and staring violently at nothing;" costume and truth being utterly outraged, the roturier's wife mapped in the ermine of the duchess, and perchance dandling on her maternal lap what appears to be a dancing dog in its professional finery, but which, on closer inspection, turns out to be an imp of a child, made a fool of by its mother and milliner; and my lady in inadequate garments, and a pair of wings, flourishing as some heathen divinity or abstract virtue!

Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846