If your correspondent A. B. R. will refer to Walpole's _Fugitive Pieces_ he will find a minute inquiry into the person and age of this long-lived lady. This is doubtless the dissertation alluded to by C. (Vol. ii., p. 219.) Pennant has _two_ notices of the countess in his Scotch tours. In that of 1769 (which somewhat strangely follows the one of 1772), he gives at p. 87. the engraving spoken of (Vol. iv., p. 306.), apparently taken from the original at Dupplin Castle. It differs a little from R.'s description of another portrait, as the cloak is strapped over the chest, not held by a button. In 1772 Pennant again describes this portrait in his _Tour in Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 88., and speaks of four others, viz., first, at Devonshire House; second, at the Hon. John Yorke's seat, near Cheltenham; third, at Mr. Scott's, printer; and the fourth, in the Standard Closet, Windsor Castle. At the back of the last is written with a pen "Rembrandt." "A mistake (says P.) as Rembrandt was not fourteen years of age (he was indeed only eight) in 1614, at which time it is certain the countess was not living." In my copy of the _Fugitive Pieces_ (the Strawberry Hill edition, presented by Walpole to Cole), I find the following manuscript note by Cole; _an amplification of the_ passage from Walpole's letters quoted at p. 306.:-- "Being at Strawberry Hill in April, 1773, I saw there a copy of the picture commonly attributed to the old Countess of Desmond; but Mr. Walpole told me that there is sufficient proof that it is a painter's mother, I think Rembrandt's. However, by a letter from Mr. Lort, April 15, 1774, he assures me that on Mr. Pennant's calling at Strawberry Hill to see this picture, he was much chagrined at having a print of it engraved for his book, till Mr. Lort revived him by carrying him to a garret in Devonshire House, where was a picture of this same countess with her name on it, exactly corresponding to his engraved print. I remember a tolerable good old picture of her at Mr. Dicey's, prebendary of Bristol, at Walton in Bucks." Walpole could not dismiss Pennant without a disparaging remark. He is "a superficial man, and knows little of history or antiquity; but he has a violent rage for being an author." Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones: Pennant would not have displayed the ignorance which Walpole exhibits in the instance before us. In an inscription, which the latter gives, on a Countess of Desmond buried at Sligo, occurs the following contraction: "Desmoniæ _Noie_ Elizabetha." Walpole says (_Fugitive Pieces_, p. 204.), "This word I can make no sense of, but _sic originale_; I take it to be redundancy of the carver. It seems to be a repetition of the last three syllables of Desmoniæ!"