(803) Maria Cosway, the wife of the eminent painter, and herself distinguished for her proficience both in painting and music.  She was a native of Italy but of English parentage; and being passionately fond of music, her soir`ees in Pall-Mall and afterwards in Stratford-place, were attended by all the fashion of the town.  In consequence of ill-health, accompanied by her brother, who had gained, as a student in painting, the Academy’s gold metal, she had left England for Italy; where she remained about three years.-E

(804) The celebrated Count Lally do Tollendal.  In 1789, he was one of the most eloquent members of the Constituent Assembly; but disapproving of the principles that prevailed, he retired into Switzerland, Gibbon, in a letter of the 15th of December of that year, says of him, “Lally is an amiable man of the world, and a poet:  he passes the winter here; you know how much I prefer a quiet select society to a crowd of names and titles:  what happy countries are England and Switzerland, if they know and preserve their happiness!” Having returned to France in 1792, he was sent to the Abbaye; whence he escaped during the massacres which took place in the prisons in September, and effected his retreat to England, where he found an asylum in the house of Lord Sheffield.  On the restoration of the Bourbons, he was created a peer of France, and died in 1830.  The subject of the tragedy above alluded to was the fall of the Earl of Strafford.-E.

(805) The unfortunate Count do Lally, governor of Pondicherry; who, on the surrender of the place to the English in 1761, was made prisoner of war, and sent to England.  In the Chatham Correspondence, there is a letter from him to Mr. Pitt, written in English; in which he says, “When I shall have seen and heard here of Mr. Pitt all I have already read of him, I shall always remember I am his prisoner, and liberty to me, though a Frenchman, is of an inestimable value; therefore, I earnestly beg your interest with his Majesty to grant me leave to repair to my native soil.”  The desired permission was granted; but no sooner had he reached Paris, than he was thrown into the Bastille, and after being confined several years, brought to trial for treachery and found guilty.  When his sentence was pronounced, “the excess of his indignation,” says Voltaire, " was equal to his astonishment:  he inveighed against his judges, and, holding in his hand a pair of compasses, which he used for tracing maps in his prison, he struck it against his heart; but the blow was not sufficient to take away life; he was dragged into a dung-cart, with a gag in his mouth, lest, being conscious of his innocence, he should convince the Spectators of the injustice of his fate.”  Madame du Deffand, in giving to Walpole, on the 10th of January 1766, an account of this horrible scene, having stated, that the populace “battait des mains pendant l’ex`ecution,” he returned her an answer, in a high degree honourable to his moral feeling:—­“Ah!