She was a woman of great tact, of a sweet delicacy of manner, and of a chivalrous devotedness to friendship.  Her friends were carefully chosen, and never deserted.  Perhaps no woman of the century has had so many men of mark as her friends and admirers.  She had charity towards others’ failings.  She gave pleasure where she could.  She was elegant and dignified in her bearing, though possessed of Irish wit withal.  She was very beautiful.

Lord Byron was induced to sing the praise of her picture here given:—­

   “Were I now as I was, I had sung
   What Lawrence has painted so well;
   But the strain would expire on my tongue,
   And the theme is too soft for my shell.

   “I am ashes where once I was fire,
   And the bard in my bosom is dead: 
   What I loved I now merely admire,
   And my heart is as gray as my head.

   “Let the young and the brilliant aspire
   To sing what I gaze on in vain,
   For sorrow has torn from my lyre
   The string which was worthy the strain.”

[Illustration:  Mary Isabella duchess of Rutland by Reynolds]

HER GRACE OF RUTLAND

Rowlandson, the caricaturist, once published a cartoon entitled “Juno Devon, All Sublime.”  The rival goddesses in competition with her before that modern Paris, the Prince of Wales, being their Graces of Gordon and Rutland.  Beyond the various written records of the opposing beauty of those aristocratic dames who dominated society in their day, we have ample painted evidence of their loveliness.  Of her Grace of Devonshire, we have, first, the engraved renderings of “the lost Gainsborough.”  There are other Gainsboroughs, too,—­Georgiana as a child, and a full-length of her standing at the edge of a lawn, her face looking down, wearing a white dress, her right elbow on the base of a column, a scarf in both hands, her hair piled high, but without the hat, as in the more famous picture.  There are then several by Sir Joshua.  The first, where she stands as a child beside her mother; then, she as a mother with her own child,—­a very charming profile, and a picture that insinuates the vivacity of demeanor and the abandon so characteristic of her.

Walpole wrote of this as “Little like and not good.”  Yet, as to goodness, a modern authority has said:  “It is a superb work; and, in motive, color, and composition, it ranks as a triumph alike of nature and art.”  Again, there is a whole-length showing her about to descend some steps to a lawn, her superb shoulders and neck bare, and her hair highly bedecked with feathers.  Walpole writes of another portrait, drawn by Lady Di Beauclerck, and engraved by Bartolozzi:  “A Castilian nymph conceived by Sappho and executed by Myron, would not have had more grace and simplicity.  The likeness is perfectly preserved, except that the paintress has lent her own expression to the Duchess, which