oust Angelica from her throne: he reigned
with her, a twin-planet.  This was the Count
Frederic de Horn, the representative of a
noble Swedish family, who had been for some
time expected in England. Whether my
poor, poor little Angelica really loved him;
whether she was dazzled by his embroidery,
his diamond star, his glittering buckles, his
green riband, his title, his handsome face and
specious tongue, will never be known; but
she became speedily his bride.  For my part
I think she was seized by one of those
short madnesses of frivolity to which all
beautiful women are subject.  You know
not why, they know not why themselves,
but they melt the pearl of their happiness in
vinegar as the Egyptian queen did: she in the
wantonness of wealth; they in the wasteful
extravagance of youth, the consciousness of
beauty, the impatience of control, and the
momentary hatred of wise counsel.

Angelica Kauffmann was married in January
seventeen hundred and sixty-eight, with
great state and splendour, to the man of her
choice.  Half London witnessed their union:
rich were the presents showered upon the
bride, multifarious the good wishes for the
health and prosperity of the young couple.
And all went merry as a marriage bell—
till the bell rang out, first in vague rumours,
then in more accredited reports, at last as an
incontrovertible miserable truth, that another
Count de Horn had arrived in England to
expose and punish an impostor and swindler
who had robbed him of his property and his
name—till it was discovered that Angelica
Kauffmann had married the man so sought—a
low-born cutpurse, the footman of the Count!

Poor Angelica, indeed!  This bell tolled
the knell of her happiness on earth.  The
fraudulent marriage was annulled as far as
possible, by a deed of separation dated the
tenth of February, seventeen hundred and
sixty-eight; a small annuity was secured to
the wretched impostor, on condition that he
should quit England and not return thereto.
He took his money and went abroad.
Eventually he died in obscurity.

Numberless conjectures have been made as
to whether this unfortunate marriage was
merely a genteel swindling speculation on
the part of the Count de Horn's lacquey,
or whether it was the result of a deep-laid
conspiracy against the happiness and honour
of Angelica.  A French novelist, who has
written a romance on the events of my
heroine's life, invents a very dexterous,
though very improbable, fable of a certain
Lord Baronnet, member of the chamber of
Commons, whose hand had been refused by
Angelica, and who in mean and paltry
revenge. discovered, tutored, fitted out, and
launched into society, the rascally fellow
who had been recently discharged from the
service of the Count de Horn, and whose
name he impudently assumed.  Another
novelist makes out the false count to have been
a young man, simple, credulous, and timid
—lowly-born, it is true, but still sincerely
enamoured of Angelica (like the Claude Melnotte
of Pauline in the Lady of Lyons).  He is even
led to believe that he is the real Prince of
Como—we beg pardon: Count de Horn—
imagines that a mysterious veil envelopes the
circumstances of his birth; but, when the
truth is discovered, and he finds that he has
been made the tool of designing villains, he
testifies the utmost remorse, and is desirous
of making every reparation in his power.
A third author, M. Dessalles Regis, not only
avers the premeditated guilt of the false
count, but alludes to a dark rumour that the
Beauséant of the drama, the villain who had
dressed up this lay-figure in velvet and gold
lace to tempt Angelica to destruction, was no
other than her rejected lover, Sir Joshua
Reynolds.  For my part, I incline to the first
hypothesis. I believe the footman to have
been a scoundrel.

A long period of entire mental and bodily
prostration followed the ill-starred marriage.
J. J. Kauffmann, good fellow, comforted his
daughter as well as he was able; but his
panacea for her grief, both of mind and body,
was Italy.  He was weary of England, fogs,
fashions, false counts—there was no danger of
spurious nobility abroad; for could not any
one with a hundred a-year of his own be a
count if he liked?  Still Angelica remained
several years more in this country; still
painting, still patronised, but living almost
entirely in retirement.  When the death of
her husband the footman placed her hand at
liberty, she bestowed it on an old and faithful
friend, Antonio Zucchi, a painter of
architecture; and, five days afterwards, the
husband, wife, and father embarked for
Venice.  Zucchi was a tender husband; but
he was a wayward, chimerical, visionary
man, and wasted the greatest part of his
wife's fortune in idle speculations. He died
in seventeen hundred and ninety-five, leaving
her little or nothing.  The remainder of
poor Angelica's life was passed, if not in
poverty, at least in circumstances straitened
to one who, after the first hardships of her
wandering youth, had lived in splendour and
freedom, and the companionship of the great.
But she lived meekly, was a good woman, and
went on painting to the last.

Angelica Kauffmann died a lingering death
at Rome, on the fifth of November, eighteen
hundred and five.  On the seventh, she was
buried in the church of St. Andrea delle
Frate; the academicians of St. Luke followed
the bier, and the entire ceremony was under
the direction of Canova.  As at the funeral
of  Rafaelle Sanzio, the two last pictures she
had painted were carried in the procession;
on the coffin there was a model of her right
hand in plaster, the fingers crisped, as though
it held a pencil.

This was the last on earth of Angelica Kauffmann.
Young, beautiful, amiable, gifted by