oint of attending her first appearances and
benefits, sitting among the musicians in the orchestra. When she
prepared for the character of Lady Macbeth he helped her plan the
costumes and sat rapt and breathless during her first performance.
This was generally considered her grandest effort, and she used
herself to say that after playing it thirty years she never read over
the part without discovering in it something new. In this character
she bade farewell to her profession June 29, 1812. It was said by a
contemporary critic that "there was not a height of grandeur to which
she could not soar, nor a darkness of misery to which she could not
descend; not a chord of feeling from the sternest to the most delicate
which she could not cause to vibrate at her will."

VII

ANGELS' HEADS

Our thoughts of angels are naturally connected with thoughts of
children. Jesus once spoke of the little ones as those whose angels
always behold the face of the heavenly Father. Their innocence is the
best type we have on earth of the purity of beings of a higher sphere.
Often when we try to describe the beauty of some little child, we use
the word angelic.

This explains why Sir Joshua Reynolds when called to paint the
portrait of a little girl conceived the pretty fancy of the picture of
Angels' Heads.[11] The child's fair face suggested that of an angel.
She had golden hair and blue eyes, and a very sweet little mouth. It
was a face which was so charming from every point of view that he
painted it in five positions. Grouping the heads in a circle, he added
wings after the manner of the cherubs of the old Italian masters,
surrounded them with clouds, and lighted the composition with a broad
ray of light streaming diagonally across the canvas.

[Footnote 11: Originally called A Cherub Head in Different Views.]

The child's hair falls about the face in straight dishevelled locks,
and it is not easy to tell at once whether it is a boy or a girl. In
reality the original was little Miss Frances Isabella Ker Gordon,
only child of Lord William Gordon and his wife Frances.

In each position of the five heads the expression varies, and looking
from one to another, we may trace through the series the child's
changing moods. Let each face tell its own story, and perhaps we may
learn something of the workings of the mind behind it.

Here at the lower left side the child suddenly sees some new object, a
strange bird or flower, and fix