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is tall, slender, and elegant, the attitude easy, the neck and turn of the head dignified and graceful; the complexion is that of a brunette, with fine dark eyes, and an expression of smiling disdain on the full red lips; the drapery is intended to represent white satin, but the tint is that of chalk, and the texture that of woollen; the back-ground is well painted; on the whole it may be pronounced a fine picture, and certainly the finest of all the "Beauties."

The COUNTESS OF DORSET.-Lady Mary Compton, daughter of Compton Earl of Northampton, and second wife of Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset.

This Earl of Dorset, the Mæcenas of Prior, was one of the most celebrated men of his time; he was the generous patron of the witty and the learned; himself a poet and a man of wit, and so amiable in his temper and manners, that he was universally beloved. "I don't know how it is," said Lord Rochester once, "but Lord Dorset may do what he will he is always in the right." He was brave, generous, and charitable even to a fault. Charles the Second, who was fond of his society, and admired his wit, "seemed to court him to be a favourite; but he would not give himself the trouble that belonged to that post: he hated the court, and despised the King, when he saw he was neither generous nor tender-hearted." He wrote some personal satires so severe, that he might justly have been styled

"The best-natured man, with the worst-natured Muse.”

It was this Lord Dorset who first introduced Nell Gwyn at court, in order to shake the influence of the Duchess of Cleveland, in which she was partly successful.

The first Countess of Dorset was the beautiful Miss Bagot, so cele brated in the Memoirs of De Grammont. On her death he married Lady Mary Compton, "famed for her beauty and admirable endowments of mind." She was a woman of great sense and spirit, and distinguished herself by the share she took in the escape of the Princess Anne. The Princess, after her husband had joined the Prince of Orange, was left in London, and, hearing of the King's approach, she was so struck by the apprehension of his displeasure, that she exclaimed to her friend, Lady Marlborough, "that rather than meet the face of her injured father, she would jump out of the window." The same night she escaped in the Earl of Dorset's carriage, assisted and supported by the presence of mind and affectionate attention of the Countess, "who furnished her with every thing," and with her husband attended her to Nottingham.

The Countess of Dorset died a short time after her marriage, in the full bloom of her youth and beauty. She left a son, and a daughter, afterwards Duchess of Beaufort.

This portrait must, by a comparison of dates, have been painted only a few months before her death. The figure is singularly elegant and graceful, the face beautiful, but rather insipid, and not at all expressive of that intellectual power for which this Countess was remarkable. The drapery is rich, trimmed with jewels and ermine; but the whole tone of the picture is too sombre, and the back-ground (a fine bit

* Burnet's History.

of landscape) is almost lost in black shadows; a little cleaning and varnishing would probably remedy this, which is more the effort of time and damp than the fault of the painter.

LADY MIDDLETON.-This is so beautiful a picture, that we cannot help regretting the more that so little is known of the original. There was a Countess of Middleton in this reign celebrated for her beauty; but, as her husband was a staunch Jacobite, who never could be prevailed upon to court the rising sun, it is very unlikely that the picture of his wife would be admitted into William's Gallery of Beauties. There were no less than five baronets of the name of Middleton living at the same time, so that it has become almost impossible to identify the original of this lovely picture. Lady Middleton is represented as a shepherdess, with a crook in her hand: this was the affected taste of the day, and is the only fault of the picture. The figure is beautiful on a small scale; the features, soft and delicate, with a look of pensive sweetness; the drapery, painted with extreme richness of colour, and the landscape free, airy, and brilliant; most unlike the usual style of this master, in which the back-ground is almost always sacrificed to the head. The colouring has suffered less in this picture than in any of the others.

THE DUCHESS OF ST. ALBANS.-Lady Diana Vere, daughter of Aubrey de Vere, twentieth and last Earl of Oxford of his family.*

This beautiful woman, the sole remaining representative of her illustrious race, was the greatest heiress in riches and blood in the three kingdoms. Charles the Second early cast his eye upon her for one of his sons, and she was united in 1694, to Charles Beauclerc, Duke of St. Alban's, natural son of the King by Nell Gwyn.

She was extremely young when she first appeared at court in the reign of William the Third, and appears to have been as amiable and innocent as she was lovely. Lord Lansdown passes her over with a slight allusion, as rich in charms," but she found a better admirer in Addison, who has given her a distinguished place among the toasts, written for the Kit-Cat Club.

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"The line of Vere, so long renown'd in arms,
Concludes with lustre in St. Alban's charms;

And again,

Her conquering cyes have made their race complete,
It rose in valour, and in beauty set."

"The saints above can ask, but not bestow,

This saint can give all happiness below."

Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the father of this beautiful Duchess, lived to distinguish himself in five successive reigns, by the facility with which he adapted himself to the tastes and manners of all. He was singularly handsome, and possessed of many personal and courtly accomplishments; but he had neither wit, nor talent, nor principle; and one incident of his life has consigned him to everlasting infamy,

* Reckoning from the Conquest; but the Veres were Saxon earls before the time of Edward the Confessor.

"A le voir (says Hamilton) on dirait que c'est quelque chose, mais à l'entendre on voit bien que ce n'est rien."-Memoires de Grammont.

which not all the blood of all the Veres, since the Conquest, can ever wash from his name. In the reign of Charles the Second he became enamoured of a beautiful young actress, who played so inimitably the part of Roxana in Lee's "Rival Queens," that she was known by no other name. Lord Oxford-long besieged her with prayers, with presents, with every temptation he could devise; but the young Sultana had virtue, spirit, and a respectable mother to protect her, and his offers were treated with the disdain they deserved. At length he proposed marriage, promising to acknowledge her as his wife, and they were privately united, in the presence of witnesses, who signed the contract. Shortly afterwards, the unfortunate girl discovered that she had been betrayed by a false marriage; that the pretended clergyman was Lord Oxford's trumpeter, and the witness his drummer, both of whom disappeared immediately after the ceremony. She loudly exclaimed against such unheard-of perfidy. She threw herself at the feet of the King, and besought his justice and compassion-in vain; in that profligate court, all stratagems in gallantry were accounted lawful; and what had a pretty actress to do with virtue ?—it was "une impertinence—une obstination inouie." She met with no redress, scarcely even with pity, but went home to her poor mother, and died brokenhearted. Lord Oxford plumed himself on his conquest; and it does not appear that his detestable and cowardly perfidy excited either surprise or animadversion. This is the story alluded to in " Peveril of the Peak," where the Earl is called a young nobleman; but Aubrey de Vere was born in the reign of James the First, and, therefore, could hardly plead his youth as an excuse for his excesses. He died in 1702, and saw, with all the mortification of a vain, weak, and proud man, his illustrious name and long-descended honours, expire in himself.

The Duchess of St. Alban's was the mother of eight sons, and lived to see most of them distinguished in the service of their country. She was first Lady of the Bedchamber, and Lady of the Stole to Queen Caroline, and died in 1741.

This picture was painted at the time of her marriage, and the face and figure are those of a blooming girl of fourteen or fifteen. She is represented as leaning on a sculptured vase, containing an orange-tree, and holding one of the fruit in her hand. The features are delicate, with an expression of childish simplicity and sweetness, and the drapery easy and graceful. On the whole this may be pronounced one of the most beautiful of the collection.

The COUNTESS of ESSEX.-Lady Mary Bentinck, eldest daughter of William Earl of Portland, (the favourite of William the Third,) and wife of Algernon Capel, second Earl of Essex.

This Earl of Essex was a valiant and distinguished officer, and son of that unhappy Lord Essex, who was found with his throat cut in the

"What can ennoble fools, or sots, or cowards ?
-Alas, not all the blood of all the Howards!"

"Elle n'eut qu'à se relever," adds Miss Hobart, who relates the story in De Grammont.

Lord Sidney Beauclerc, her fifth son, was the father of Topham Beauclerc, the celebrated wit and friend of Dr. Johnson, who makes such a figure in Boswell's Life.

Tower, on the occasion of Lord Russel's trial.

We find the beauty of

the Countess of Essex celebrated by most of the courtly poets of that time; and all, without exception, particularise the extreme gentleness and retiring sweetness of her disposition. The following stanza was composed on her marriage, in allusion to the military prowess of the king*, and her own gentle charms :—

"The bravest hero, and the gentlest dame,

From Belgium's happy clime Britannia drew;
One pregnant cloud we find does often frame
The awful thunder and the gentle dew."

Addison has been happier in the elegant compliment he pays her among the toasts of the Kit-Cat Club :

"To Essex fill the sprightly wine!
Let purest odours scent the air,

And wreaths of roses bind our hair:
In her chaste lips these blushing lie,
And those her gentle sighs supply!"

Lady Essex was not so happy in her painter, as in her poet if the latter may be supposed to have flattered a little, the former has done her less than justice. Her portrait is the least striking of all the "Beauties;" meagre in the colouring, and cold and stiff in design: the face has considerable sweetness; but this is all.

These are all the Beauties actually at Hampton Court; but in the engraved set three others are generally included: Sarah Duchess of Marlborough-the Countess of Clarendon-and the Duchess of Manchester, all celebrated women in their day. We look in vain, too, for some beautiful faces, which the works of Addison, Pope, and Steele, have rendered familiar to us by name; as, for example, Lady Wharton, the Duchess of Queensbury+, Lady Newburgh (Lord Lansdown's Myra), Arabella Fermor (the heroine of the "Rape of the Lock"), and a host of others; but of these hereafter.

ON A SCENE OF YOUTH.

LONG years have pass'd since childhood's giddy hour
Beheld me wandering 'mid those hoary oaks
With step erratic, sporting idle jokes,

And weaving leaves and many a sweet wild flower
Into a wreath for my companion's hair-

How fresh was then my heart, how gay and light,
Ere it was sear'd by years, and the world's spite,
And care was made its heritage !-'twas there
When evening sank in quietude and rest,

While the soft woodlark, and the mellow thrush,
Day's requiem sang from tree and hawthorn bush,
My thoughts were first in garb poetic drest;-
There beauty first I worshipp'd, feeling there
Young love's romance, that never comes again.

And not of her husband, as Mr. Noble supposes. +"If Queensbury to strip there's no compelling,

'Tis from her handmaid we must take a Helen."

Oct-VOL. XVII. NO. LXX.

WALKS IN ROME AND ITS ENVIRONS.-NO. IV.

"Dove suoco quelli buoni Romani ?-dove ene loro soma justitia ?-poteramne trovare in tiempo che quessi fiuriano!"

THE oracular gestures and decisions of the Abbate got into my head, and remained there all night. I dreamt of nothing but the Cyclops, the Capitol, the Cæsars, and the good estate." But I had been now two days at Rome without seeing St. Peter's, and was beginning to think seriously of my pilgrimage to the Limina Apostolorum, when the Abbate himself stalked suddenly into my room. I felt all the scandal of the delay, and entered immediately upon my defence. The Abbate smiled, held out his snuff-box with much courtesy, and prepared to hear me, as I imagined, to the end; but the moment I touched upon St. Peter, he opened at once into a loud laugh, made two or three rapid strides about the room, and after emphatically tapping a well-worn antique, which was still visible upon the lid, peremptorily decided for the ancients.

"For the ancients, then!" I exclaimed, in following him out of the door, "and let St. Peter wait for one day longer." The caritelle was at the en trance, and the Abbate took his place in it without much reluctance. At every step down the stone staircase, I could hear him sternly murmuring"Capitolium quoque-saxo quadrato substructum est-opus vel in hac magnificentiâ urbis conspiciendum:"-a quotation which immediately turned my horses' heads to the Capitol, and arranged, without appeal, my promenade for the day.

The lazy pace of the horses, the rumbling of the crazy wheels over the pavement of the Piazza di Spagna, and a sun still in its meredian, predisposed me, without any other assistance, to reflection. I could not find a more appropriate or attractive subject. It is a singular sort of sensation, certainly, which is produced by excursions of this kind. One cannot visit any of these great relics of the elder world without feeling oneself placed, as it were, upon a kind of isthmus between two creations, one of imagination, which you are about to quit, the other of reality, which you are on the point of entering. It is a pleasant thing to have to say,-I am at last at Rome, and before this hour to-morrow may see the Capitol, the Forum, the Pantheon, and, for aught I know, St. Peter's. This is the last day in which they will appear to me in their ordinary shape. The first view will naturally break up all my old associations at a glance, throw the elements into new moulds, scatter my imaginary topography, settle the wandering imagery of antiquity, localize the allusions, embody the shadowings, and fix the phantoms of classic beauty with a sort of encaustic, as precise as it is brilliant, upon the memory, which will admit of nothing sketchy or fugitive in future. Here is to be no farther alteration: as I see Rome at present, I shall see it probably for the remainder of my life.

I was dreaming on through these reveries, and do not know how long I might have indulged, with Lord Nelvil, before the curtain, when my friend, whose siesta had not yet arrived, tapped me gently on the shoulder, and roused my attention to the realities before me. I found we had just entered the Corso, and in a few minutes were opposite the Casa D—, where we had passed the preceding evening. The Abbate, with his usual instinct, soon recognised his patroness in one of the upper windows; and, after saluting her familiarly with a profusion of Arcadian epithets, and his choicest academic reverences, replaced his three-cornered cocked hat, and passed magnificently on. "We are now," says he, with peculiar complaisance, after having performed the morning duty of a client so much to his satisfaction" we are now," says he, "in the Regio Nona; the Campus Martius is behind us, and not many paces distant the Circus Flaminius and the Capitol. The Via Lata may be somewhere in this direction, though I doubt much whether it were ever so wide' or straggling as our modern Corso. The ancients, Sir, the ancients after all! They ordered these things

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