cultivated in mind, fascinating in manners,
the friendship of Joshua Reynolds was a
thing of general desideration.  To all it was
pleasant—to many it was valuable.

Lord Exeter's introduction was speedily
productive of a cordial intimacy between
Angelica and Reynolds.  He painted
Angelica's portrait: she painted his.  On the
establishment of the Royal Academy, she
was enrolled among its members,—a rare
honour for a lady.  But, the friendship of Sir
Joshua soon ripened into a warmer feeling.
He became vehemently in love with her.
There is no evidence, or indeed reason, to
suppose that Reynolds's intentions towards
Angelica Kauffmann were anything but
honourable.  There was no striking disparity
between their ages.  The fame of Angelica
bid fair in time to equal his own, and
bring with it a commensurate fortune;
yet, for some inexplicable reason—probably
through an aversion or a caprice as
inexplicable—Angelica discouraged his advances.
To avoid his importunities, she even fled from
the protection of Lady Mary Veertvoort, and
established herself in a house in Golden
Square, where she was soon afterwards joined
by her father.

At the commencement of the year seventeen
sixty-seven, Angelica Kauifmann shared
—with hoops of extra magnitude, toupees of
superabundant floweriness, shoe-heels of vividest
scarlet, and china monsters of superlative
ugliness—the mighty privilege of being the
fashion.  Madame de Pompadour was the
fashion in France just then, so was Buhl
furniture, Boucher's pictures, and the Baron de
Holbach's atheism; so, in England were
"drums," ridottos, Junius's Letters, and
burnings of Lord Bute's jack-boots in effigy.
The beauteous Duchess of Devonshire—she
who had even refused Reynolds the favour of
transferring her lineaments to canvas—
commissioned the fair Tyrolean to execute her
portrait, together with that of Lady Duncannon.
Soon came a presentation at St. James's;
next a commission from George the Third
for his portrait, and that of the young Prince
of Wales.  After this, Angelica became doubly,
triply, fashionable.  She painted at this time a
picture of Venus attired by the Graces—a
dangerous subject.  Some of the critics
grumbled of course, and muttered that Cupid
wouldn't have known his own mother in
the picture; but decorous royalty applauded,
and (oh dear, how decorous!) aristocracy
patronised, and the critics were dumb.

So, all went merry as a marriage bell with
J. J. Kauffmann's daughter. A magnificent
portrait of the Duchess of Brunswick, put
the seal to the patent of her reputation.
No fashionable assembly was
complete without her presence. In the world
of fashion, the world of art, the world of
literature, she was sought after, courted, idolised.
One young nobleman, it is stated, fell
into a state of melancholy madness because
she refused to paint his portrait. Officers in
the Guards fought for a ribbon that had
dropped from her corsage at a birthnight ball.
The reigning toasts condescended to be
jealous of her, and hinted that the beauty of
"these foreign women" was often fictitious,
and never lasting. Dowagers, more accustomed
to the use of paint than even she
was, hoped that she was "quite correct,"
and shook their powdered old heads, and
croaked about Papists and female
emissaries of the Pretender. Scandal of course,
was on the alert. Sir Benjamin Backbite
called on Lady Sneerwell in his sedan-chair.
Mrs. Candour was closeted with Mr.
Marplot; and old Doctor Basilic, the Spanish
music-master of Leicester Fields, talked toothless
scandal with his patron, Don Bartolo of
St. Mary-Axe. The worst stories that the
scandalmongers could invent were but two in
number, and are harmless enough to be told
here. One was, that Angelica was in the
habit of attending, dressed in boy's clothes,
the Royal Academy Life School; the second
story—dreadful accusation!—was that
Angelica was a flirt, an arrant coquette; and
that one evening at Rome, being at the
opera with two English artists, one of
whom was Mr. Dance (afterwards Sir
Nathaniel Dance Holland, the painter of Garrick
in Richard the Third), she had allowed both
gentlemen gently to encircle her waist with
their arms—at the same time: nay, more, that
folding her own white waxen arms on the
ledge of the opera box, and finding naturally
a palpitating artist's hand on either side,
she had positively given each hand a squeeze,
also at the same time: thereby leading each
artist to believe that he was the favoured
suitor. I don't believe my Angelica ever did
anything of the kind.

Scandal, jealousy, reigning toasts, and
withered dowagers notwithstanding, Angelica
continued the fashion. Still the carriages
blocked up Golden Square; still she was
courted by the noble and wealthy; still
ardent young Oxford bachelors and buckish
students of the Temple wrote epistles in heroic
verse to her; still she was the talk of the
coffee-houses and studios; still from time to
time the favoured few who gained admission
to Lady Mary Veertvoort's evening concerts
were charmed by Angelica's songs—by the
grand Italian pieces, and the simple, plaintive,
Tyrolean airs of old;—still all went merry
as a marriage bell.

In seventeen sixty-eight there appeared in
the most fashionable circles of London a man,
young, handsome, distinguished, accomplished
in manners, brilliant in conversation, the
bearer of a noble name, and the possessor of
a princely fortune. He dressed splendidly,
played freely, lost good-humouredly, took to
racing, cock-fighting, masquerade-giving, and
other fashionable amusements of the time,
with much kindliness and spirit. He speedily
became the fashion himself, but he did not