Some Old Time Beauties

ce of Wales (George IV.) in 1785. And there also was a more notorious beauty, Miss Grace Dalrymple, afterwards Mrs. Elliott,--though divorced later, and becoming the mistress of various aristocrats, notably the Duke of Orleans.

The Duchess of Montagu, granddaughter of the great Duke of Marlborough (one of the Churchills,--a family prolific of beauties), was there seen. Several pictures of the painter's wife (who was a Miss Margaret Burr), of his youngest daughter, Mary, afterwards Mrs. Fischer, and one of his friend, Miss Linley, went to augment this superb congregation of beauties shown. Portraits of Garrick,--that intensely interesting Stratford portrait,--Earl Spencer, Pitt, Earl Stanhope, Colonel St. Leger, George IV., Duke of Cumberland, George III., Earl Cathcart, Canning, Dr. Johnson, Fox, and several showings of himself, made up a body of work unsurpassed in importance by that of the president of the Academy himself.

Gainsborough was born in 1727; he moved to Bath, in its most brilliant period,