Angelica Kaufmann, though the name is foreign, though she was born on the banks of the German Rhine, may still be called an Englishwoman, for her work lay chiefly in England, and the greater part of her life was spent in this country. Although no mighty heroine, she was on the one hand a lover of art, a painter, a musician, in the eyes of the public beautiful and popular; on the other, a genuine, true-hearted woman, often deceived, but never deceiving, true to the world, and true to herself. She was born in 1741, at a town on the Rhine, in a wild and picturesque district. Her father, John Kaufmann, had been a sort of travelling painter, mending a picture here, copying one there, and painting signs for the public houses in the neighbourhood. In the course of his travels he had met a German girl, married her, and their only child they called Marie Anne Angelica Catherine; so, though born to poverty, she was rich in names. John Kaufmann then took to painting as a means of livelihood. The first toys that little Angelica had were his paint-brushes, his unstrained canvas, his bladders of colour, which she would play with till her little fingers were discoloured, and her pinafore daubed all over. It was not many years before it became evident that the little girl would surpass her father in the love--if not in the art--of painting. When he gave her copy-books to learn her letters, she left the words unwritten, and copied the pictures only. Instead of playing with childish toys, she would get scraps of paper and copy the pictures and models in her father's studio, or sketch the trees and houses in the country round. Then her father began to teach her drawing; he showed her how to mix the colours, and lay them on; he explained to her about light and shade, and gave her models to copy. When they went out for walks, he would take the child's hand and make her look well at the faces of the people they passed, then draw their features when she got home. So little Angelica, or Angela, as her father loved to call her, learnt to love drawing and painting more and more. When she was eleven, her father moved to Como in Italy; here people heard of Angelica and her wonderful power of painting, and the Bishop of Como offered to sit for the little girl to paint him. He was an old man with a long flowing beard, a difficult subject for such a young artist, but Angelica did it, and the portrait was such a success that the Archbishop of Milan and many other great Italians sat to be painted by the eleven-year-old child, until she had more work than she could well do. Still she went on, learning, copying the Old Masters' pictures, and teaching herself the old Italian art.