“a surpassing spirit whose light adorned the world around it.”  Her husband grieved greatly.  He was ordered to travel to divert his despair.  He visited Gibraltar, and there the dormant martial spirit of his ancestors was aroused by his environment.  Though then forty-three years of age, he immediately entered the army as a volunteer.  He rapidly rose in his profession, and had an especially brilliant career in the Peninsular War.  In 1811, he became the hero of Barossa, and in the same year was made second in command to the Duke of Wellington.  He was created Lord Lynedoch of Balgowan, Perthshire, and frequently was thanked by Parliament for his services.  Sheridan said, “Never was there a loftier spirit in a braver heart.”  And alluding to his services during the retreat to Corunna, he said, “Graham was their best adviser in the hour of peril; and in the hour of disaster, their surest consolation.”  Scott eulogizes him in the poem, “The Vision of Don Roderick,” in the lines,—­

   “Nor be his praise o’erpast who strove to hide
   Beneath the warrior’s vest affection’s wound,
   Whose wish Heaven for his country’s weal denied;
   Danger and fate, he sought, but glory found.

   “From clime to clime, wher’e’r war’s trumpets sound,
   The wanderer went; yet, Caledonia, still
   Thine was his thought in march and tented ground;
   He dreamed mid Alpine cliffs of Athole’s hill,
   And heard in Ebro’s roar his Lynedoch’s lovely rill.

   “O hero of a race renowned of old,
   Whose war-cry oft has waked the battle swell!”

Old Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, wrote of a late Duke of Athole:  “Courage, endurance, stanchness, fidelity, and warmth of heart, simplicity, and downrightness, were his staples.”  They are ever the staples of the Scotch character, and they were all pre-eminent in Sir Thomas.  His life was noble, and his affection was faithful to its early troth.

A pathetic history attaches to this picture of Mrs. Graham:  When its subject died, the sorrowing husband had it bricked up where it hung, and it was only by an accident that it was discovered at his death, in 1843.  It now hangs in the National Gallery of Scotland at Edinburgh.  The present reproduction shows but a part of the picture, the figure being full length.  It has been excellently reproduced in etching by both Flameng and Waltner.

In 1885, a most comprehensive exhibition of Gainsborough’s works was made at the Grosvenor Gallery in London.  At it was noted the important part this painter had played in perpetuating the lineaments, bearing, graces, and gownings of the great persons of the latter half of the eighteenth century.

   “The lips that laughed an age agone,
   The fops, the dukes, the beauties all,
   Le Brun that sang and Carr that shone.”