nd
lashes hiding the eyes. "Oh, how beautiful! oh, who is it!" exclaimed I.
"A--a lady," stammered Lawrence, turning white and red, "toward
whom--for whom--I entertained the profoundest regard." Thereupon he fled
out of the room. "It is the portrait of Mrs. W----," said my mother;
"she is now dead; she was an exceedingly beautiful and accomplished
woman, the authoress of the words and music of the song Sir Thomas
Lawrence asked you to learn for him."

The great painter's devotion to this lovely person had been matter of
notoriety in the London world. Strangely enough, but a very short time
ago I discovered that she was the kinswoman of my friend Miss Cobb's
mother, of whom Miss Cobb possessed a miniature, in which the fashion of
dress and style of head-dress were the same as those in the picture I
saw, and in which I also traced some resemblance to the beautiful face
which made so great an impression on me. Not long after this Mrs.
Siddons, dining with us one day, asked my mother how the sketch Lawrence
was making of me was getting on. After my mother's reply, my aunt
remained silent for some time, and then, laying her hand on my father's
arm, said, "Charles, when I die, I wish to be carried to my grave by you
and Lawrence." Lawrence reached his grave while she was yet tottering on
the brink of hers.

After my next sitting, my mother, thinking he might be gratified by my
aunt's feeling toward him, mentioned her having dined with us. He asked
eagerly of her health, her looks, her words, and my mother telling him
of her speech about him, he threw down his pencil, clasped his hands,
and, with his eyes full of tears and his face convulsed, exclaimed,
"Good God! did she say that?"

When my likeness was finished, Lawrence showed it to my mother, who,
though she had attended all my sittings, had never seen it till it was
completed. As she stood silently looking at it, he said, "What strikes
you? what do you think?" "It is very like Maria," said my mother, almost
involuntarily, I am sure, for immediately this strange man fell into one
of these paroxysms of emotion, and became so agitated as scarcely to be
able to speak; and at last, with a violent effort, said, "Oh, she is
very like her; she is very like them all!"

In spite of these emotions which I heard and saw Sir Thomas Lawrence
express, I know positively that at his death a lady, who had been an
intimate acquaintance of our family for many years, put on widow's weeds