subject, nor will outlast
the favors; still, I think Mr. Jones's ode is uncommonly good for the
occasion." The ode was "The Muse Recalled," and the occasion the
nuptials of Lord Viscount Althorp and Miss Lavinia Bingham, eldest
daughter of Sir Charles Bingham, created, in 1776, Baron Lucan of
Castlebar. Sir Charles was a man of culture, who was intimate with
Johnson, Goldsmith, Gibbon, Reynolds, and Burke. He is frequently
pleasantly mentioned by Boswell. He had married, in 1760, Margaret,
daughter of James Smith, M.P., a lady of great good sense and rare
accomplishments, and three lovely daughters were the issue from this
union. Reynolds found in them most pleasing subjects for his pencil.
Their pictures appeared at the Academy, in 1786. Lavinia was portrayed
as shown in the picture here given, and again in quite as lovely a
fashion,--standing out doors and wearing a wide-brimmed hat which
casts a broad shade across the face; the wavy curls of hair fall upon
the shoulder; in the background is a landscape. The naivete of the
face is exquisitely delightful. The old-time flavor of the whole
causes one to recall Locker's lines on the picture of his
grandmother:--

"Beneath a summer tree.
Her maiden reverie
Has a charm;
Her ringlets are in taste;
What an arm! ... what a waist
For an arm!"

In the picture of her youngest sister, Anne, is a broad hat, too; she
sits full-face, but in her features there is lacking just a little of
the quiet dignity of the eldest. All of these portraits have been made
familiar to us by the most meritorious mezzotints of them by Cousins.
In Lavinia's face there lingers all the enchanting grace of
girlhood,--a face yet full of that early beauty--

"Which, like the morning's glow
Hints a full day below."

A later president of the Academy, Sir Martin Shee, has shown us that
face in the noonday of its matronly beauty, and the gentle character
and sweet sensibility yet outshine through the mask of the flesh as in
the earlier pictures.

Lady Bingham was careful of the education and company of her
daughters. The girls were musical, and Lavinia excelled in painting as
well. Walpole writes of her being in Italy, in 1785, with Mrs. Damer,
his sculptor friend, and of her drawing with very great expression. He
was not so complimentary of her music some years before, when he tells
of being invited to Lady Lucan's to hear her daughters sing Jomelli's
"Miserere," set for