3-065-776 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Homeward Serenely She Walked, with God's Benediction upon Her", painted by A. C. H. Luxmore, in the Exhibition at the Dudley Gallery, 1874. "Evangeline." In this beautiful English hexameter line, which by itself makes a perfect little poem, Longfellow speaks of his Acadian peasant maiden, at Grand Pré, on the shores of the Basin of Minas, going to her father's house, the farmer Benedict Bellefontaine, after her attendance on confession in the Catholic parish church. Mr. Luxmore...has rendered the figure and character of Evangeline with much of that grace which comes of a true conception of a high ideal of humanity, more especially of virtuous womanhood, such as the poet designed in the heroine of this pathetic American story. We are expressly told that Evangeline had black eyes and dark brown hair, as was not unlikely in a daughter of the French colonists, or else we might rather have fancied her a fair-complexioned girl; but the artist has here followed his author with fidelity, in spite of the double meaning of the word "fair." And so we may still see the constant Evangeline, as she was to be seen a hundred and sixty years in the Nova Scotian village...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.