About a year after the promise obtained from Sheridan to attend his funeral he went to hear the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and, sitting with his back to an open window, suddenly felt something inconceivably cold touch his neck above the shirt collar. It was accompanied with stiffness and pain. On returning home he mentioned what he felt to his wife and his niece, and on looking they saw a mark about the size of a shilling, which was harder to the touch than the surrounding skin, and which he said still felt cold. The application of flannel did not remove it, and the artist becoming alarmed, consulted one after the other the most eminent surgeons of London--John Hunter himself the last. They all declared there was no danger; but there was that presentiment upon Gainsborough from which none perhaps escape. He laid his hand repeatedly on his neck and said to his sister, who had hastened to London to see him, "If this be a cancer, I am a dead man." And a cancer it proved to be. When this cruel disease fairly discovered itself, it was found to be inextricably interwoven with the threads of life, and he prepared himself for death with cheerfulness and perfect composure. He desired to be buried near his friend Kirby in Kew churchyard, and that his name only should be cut on his grave-stone. He sent for Reynolds, and peace was made between them. Gainsborough exclaimed to Sir Joshua: "We are all going to heaven, and Van Dyck is of the company," and immediately expired--August 2nd, 1788, in the sixty-first year of his age. Sheridan and the president attended him to the grave. PLATE VII.--MRS. ROBINSON--"Perdita" (At the Wallace Collection) This portrait of the beautiful actress is one of Gainsborough's finest masterpieces. The lightness, dexterity, and transparency of the pigment is almost unrivalled, not only in this artist's work, but in any picture of the eighteenth century. It hangs in the Wallace Collection at Hertford House; a smaller sketch of the same subject is at Windsor Castle. [Illustration: PLATE VII.--MRS. ROBINSON--"Perdita"]