Nelson's Lady Hamilton by Esther Meynell Page A

dine with Sir William and his Lady. In the evening of that day, there were collected several people of fashion to hear her sing. She performed, both in the serious and comic, to admiration, both in singing and acting; but her 'Nina* surpasses everything I ever saw, and I believe, as a piece of acting, nothing ever surpassed it. The whole company were in an agony of sorrow. Her acting is simple, grand, terrible, and pathetic. My mind was so much heated that I was for running down to Eartham to fetch you up to see her. But, alas! soon after, I thought I discovered an alteration in her conduct to me. A

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    coldness and neglect seemed to have taken the place of her repeated declarations of regard for me. They have left town to make many visits in the country. I expect them again the latter end of this week, when my anxiety (for I have suffered much) will be either relieved or increased, as I find her conduct. It is highly probable that none of the pictures will be finished, except I find her more friendly than she appeared to me the last time I saw her."
    The wholly imaginary clouds disappeared under the sunshine of Emma's wholesome smiles when she returned to town. Once more to Hayley Romney expressed his content in her, as he had expressed his morbid distress—
    " When she arrived to sit, she seemed more friendly than she had been, and I began a picture of her, as a present for her mother. I was very successful with it; for it is thought the most beautiful head I have painted of her yet. Now indeed, I think, she is cordial with me as ever; and she laments very much that she is to leave England without seeing you. ... I was afraid I should not have had power to have painted any more from her ; but since she has assumed her former kindness, my health and spirits are quite recovered. She performed in my house last week, singing and acting before some of the nobility with most astonishing powers; she is the talk of the whole town, and

    really surpasses everything both in singing and acting that ever appeared. Gallini offered her two thousand pounds' a year, and two benefits, if she would engage with him, on which Sir William said pleasantly that he had engaged her for life/'
    This somewhat trivial little episode of an imaginary coldness has been given space because it shows how much Emma was to Romney, how she had the power not only to inspire his genius, but also to cheer his shrinking, sensitive heart. The summer spent in London in 1791, just before her marriage, was the last time the two met—the two who are perpetually associated so long as canvas and colours last. Romney's brush has made Emma immortal as the very type and perfection of English beauty—a type that in its freshness and bloom is the very flower of our English soil and climate, our rains and mists and gentle sun.
    The last picture Romney painted of her is that known as the " Ambassadress," and she gave him a sitting for this on the very day of her wedding. It is the artist's farewell picture, and one of his finest. Here is no wild and gay Bacchante with hair streaming to the wind, no wide-eyed and doom-speaking Cassandra, but Emma herself, sweet and more grave than usual, dressed for travelling, and wearing one of the imous blue hats. She looks in this picture like

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    a woman who has weighed some of the chances of life, and has the ambition to play a larger and more serious part than she had hitherto attempted. Vesuvius smokes in the background, typical of the Italy to which she is returning and of the stormy happenings into which a few years will plunge her.
    Before Romney passes entirely out of her life it is necessary to quote the letter she wrote him after reaching Caserta, on the 2oth of December, 1791. It closes that chapter of her existence and turns down the page.
    " MY DEAR FRIEND, —I have the pleasure to inform you we arrived safe at Naples. I have been receved with open arms by all the Neapolitans