pensive recluse; but sees herself (the daughter of heroes!) in the presence of ancestors who seem to smile upon her virtues, to glory in her genius, and to prophesy her future happiness and honours.

It would be the business of a summer-day to recount the names and occupations of all the ladies of high rank who have devoted themselves to English industry, taste, and usefulness.

The Princess Royal (now the Duchess of Wirtemberg) is one of the best engravers in Europe; many of her works embellish the walls of Buckingham-house, Frogmore lodge, and St. James's palace. The drawings of the Princess Elizabeth are generally esteemed for justness of design, and grace in execution. The verses of Sir J. B. Burges (the author of the heroic poem called "Richard the First") have been emblazoned by the pencil of her Royal Highness.-Lady Spencer, Lady Temple, Lady Amherst, Lady Henry Fitzgerald, and many others, are likewise successful votaries to the muse of the graphic art. We may also boast several very bright female titles in the walks of poesy; and at the head of them we will inscribe that of the Duchess of Devonshire. One beautiful poem by her Grace is in the libraries of most people, who, if they have sensibility to feel the soft associations of domestic affection, and taste to appreciate elegant versification and accurate imagery, must say with delight

"On Gothard's hill eternal wreaths shall grow,

"While lasts the mountain, or while Ruesse shall flow." With such amiable and animating sisters of Par

1805-1806.

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nassus,

nassus, Mrs. Damer has been accustomed to pass her hours from earliest infancy. Apollo and the Nine seemed to preside at her birth. Her mother was the beautiful and accomplished widow of the Earl Aylesbury. This lady, some time after the death of her lord (who was many years her senior), married the late Field-Marshal Conway, to whom she bore the fair subject of our history. Miss Conway, with a very lovely person, and great vivacity of mind and spirits, inherited all her mother's uncommon facination of manners, to which she added a grace of deportment entirely her own; and a pathos of elocution that took the heart captive, and subdued all the senses to her controul. When her father, a veteran worthy of the soil which gave him birth, could no longer reap laurels in the field of honour, he buried his sword beneath the roses of literary glory.

General Conway lived on terms of intimacy with all the men of genius and taste who were his contemporaries it would be impertinent to enumerate them, for there is scarcely a name of eminence in the senate, the camp, or the navy, that might not be ranged under the different classes of his kinsmen, friends, and acquaintance.

The Honourable Horatio Walpole (the late Earl of Orford) was one of the General's oldest friends. He was early struck with the dawning genius of Miss Conway; and did every thing that lay in the power of friendship, cultivated taste, and polished society, to render the young lady as complete in every classical perfection of the mind,as nature had already

made

made her in person. the minor graces, of needlework, dancing, singing, and music. But the bent of her abilities was turned (by the direction of a charming emulation, and love of laudable distinction) upon achieving those acquirements in the sciences and sublimer arts, which are only to be won by close attention, deep study, and constant exercise.

She soon became mistress of

situations.

In a short time Miss Conway was regarded with eyes of admiration by persons of all ages, ranks, and Mothers proposed her as a model for their daughters; and daughters, not knowing how to envy what engaged their love, tried to copy her plan of life, her looks, her manners, nay, even her dress; for Miss Conway's intimate acquaintance with the costume of ancient Greece and Rome, gave her (though to herself almost unconsciously) a great preeminence of taste, in the fancy of her garments, over the vulgar fashions of the day.

Several men of the best families in England, and of distinguished endowments, offered themselves to General Conway as candidates for his daughter's. hand. He was as much wooed for his lovely charge as ever were the guardians of any fair lady in romance: and she rejected as many sighing swains, gallant squires, gay baronets, and stately lords, as would have filled the train of Clarissa Harlowe, or afforded Harriet Byron, "the frankest woman in England!" an opportunity of trying the patience of her cousin Selby.

After the dismission of many a lover-of some

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who

who came in coronets, and others who laid their wreaths of laurel or willows at her feet, Miss Conway bestowed her heart and her hand on Mr. Damer, the brother of Lord Milton.

With this Gentleman she lived for some years, until a melancholy death deprived her of her husband in the bloom of life.

Mrs. Damer was long the interesting object of anxiety, attention, and consolation, to her relations and friends. But she drew little alleviation from the exertions of others; she applied to her own bosom for that comfort which religion and her just sense of its efficacy could alone afford. Nature, ever wise and provident, has endowed her creatures with capacities for various pleasures, and has opened to them many sources of delight. When fate closes one fountain, another is seen flowing at our feet; and if we do not will ourselves to perish, we may drink of the water that springs in the wilderness as well as of the river which washes the city's walls. Mrs. Damer had not only imbibed this philosophy, but knew how to reduce its precepts to practice. She determined to detach her mind as much as possible from painful retrospection; and aware that grief, as well as the tender passion," thrives by indulgence," she dedicated all her hours to the culti vation of her talents: she read during whole days; and when that fatigued her, she took up the pencil, or applied herself to the chisel.

What Maria Cosway and Angelica Kauffman are in painting, Mrs. Damer is in sculpture. Her study,

in which the superb Jupiter, supposed to be the work of Phidias, reigns over the subordinate deities, Apollo, Venus, Minerva, and Mercury, reminds the spectator who enters it of the academies in Greece: he sees the charming artist in the midst of ideal beauty, and imagines for a moment that the scene is changed: he believes himself to be some Praxiteles, who, though under the immediate influence of the fine enthusiasm of creative genius, yet at intervals turns his eye upon the lovely woman before him; and, by one glance at the substance of such real and living beauty, he restrains and corrects the excursive wanderings of his wild imagination. It was in this remote chamber, devoted to taste and female talent, that Mrs. Damer's "plastic hand" (as fair as the marble she touched) brought into mimic life those exquisite busts which form the most valuable ornaments of Strawberry Hill; and that noble statue of king George the Third, which embellishes the Leverian Museum.

The exhibition of the royal academicians at Somerset House, has often been enriched by the productions of her chisel; and it has been generally understood, that if there had not been an express decree of the Academy for the exclusion of female artists as members of that body, Mrs. Damer would have. received a seat on the same bench with the fairKauffman, and other ladies of a less splendid fame. Why this Salique law was enacted by the Apelles, the Zeuxis, the Lysiphus, and the Phidias, of our British school,