Her personal appearance was far from striking. She was short and insignificant, with an agreeable, good-natured countenance. Her manner, however, was prepossessing, though she was an indifferent actress. But her voice atoned for everything. Its compass was from G to E in altissimo, which she ran with the greatest ease and force, the tones being at once powerful and sweet. Her success she owed to her untiring industry. Nothing taxed her powers, her execution was easy and neat, her shake was true, open, and liquid, and though she preferred brilliant pieces, her refined taste was well known. In England she gathered many laurels, as well as in Germany and other countries which she visited, but she came into collision with the authorities at Oxford, on account of her ignorance of the English language and of Oxford customs. On leaving England she sang at a farewell concert which netted seven hundred pounds, and her rival, Mrs. Billington, generously gave her services. Madame Mara passed the last years of her life at Revel, where she died, January, 1833, at the age of eighty-five. On the celebration of her eighty-third birthday she was offered a poetical tribute by no less a person than Goethe. Of Madame Mara's contemporary male singers Luigi Marchesi is entitled to mention, for he had, within three years of his debut, the reputation of being the best singer in Italy. He visited all Europe, even penetrating to St. Petersburg, in company with Sarti and Todi. Besides his wonderful vocal powers, which enabled him to execute the most marvellous embellishments, he was noted for great beauty of person, and for the grace and propriety of his gestures. Crescentini, too, who was considered the last great singer of his school, sang at all the chief cities of Europe, and was given by Napoleon the Iron Cross, an honor which aroused many jealousies. "Nothing could exceed," says Fetis, "the suavity of his tones, the force of his expression, the perfect taste of his ornaments, or the large style of his phrasing." For several years after his retirement he was a professor at the Royal College of Music at Naples. Mrs. Elizabeth Billington was considered to be the finest singer ever born in England. Her father was a member of the Italian Opera orchestra named Weichsel, and her mother, a pupil of John Christian Bach, was a leading vocalist at Vauxhall, whose voice was noted for a certain reediness of tone, caused, it is said, by her having practised with the oboe,--her husband's instrument.