In 1824, Lady Elizabeth Foster, then the second Duchess of Devonshire, expired at Rome, where she had lived many years in almost regal splendour. Amongst her most intimate friends were the Cardinal Consalvi and Madame Recamier, who were cognisant of the report, which was confirmed in their minds by the late duke's conduct at her death. Lady Elizabeth, as we shall still by way of distinction call her, was then so emaciated as to resemble a living spectre; but the lines of a rare and commanding beauty still remained. Her features were regular and noble, her eyes magnificent, and her attenuated figure was upright and dignified, with the step of an empress. Her complexion of marble paleness completed this portrait. Her beautiful arms and hands were still as white as ivory, though almost like a skeleton's from their thinness. She used in vain to attempt to disguise their emaciation by wearing bracelets and rings. Though surrounded by every object of art in which she delighted, by the society, both of the English, Italian, and French persons of distinction whom she preferred, there was a shade of sadness on this fascinating woman's brow, as if remembrance forbade her usual calm of life's decline. Her stepson (so reported), the late duke, treated her with respect and even affection, but there was an evident reserve between them. At her death he carefully excluded all friends to whom she could in her last moments confide what might perhaps, at that hour, trouble her conscience. Her friends, Madame Recamier and the Duc de Laval, were only admitted to bid her farewell when she was speechless, and a few minutes before she breathed her last. This circumstance struck them forcibly as confirmatory of the report alluded to; but it must in candour be stated that the duke's precautions may have originated in another source. His step-mother was disposed to Romanism, and he may have feared that the zeal of her Catholic friends should prompt them, if opportunity occurred, to speak to her on the subject of her faith, and to suggest the adoption of such consolations as their own notions would have thought indispensable at that awful moment. The point is one that cannot be settled. It may, however, be remarked, that in disposition, in his wide benevolence and courteous manners, the late duke greatly resembled the subject of this memoir,--the beautiful, the gifted, but the worldly Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. THE END. ENDNOTES. Note 1: Collins's "Peerage" gives the following account of this lady: "Peter, Lord King, married Anne, daughter of Richard Seys, Esq., of Boverton, in Glamorganshire, with whom he lived to the day of his death in perfect love and happiness, and left by her four sons and two daughters." Note 2: A portrait of my grandmother, when a girl, was seen by my mother at Hawell, in Somersetshire, the seat of Sir C. K. Tynt, many years after I was born.