Before I proceed on this daring undertaking, I beg to say, that an inspection of Pennant's print, called "The Old Countess of Desmond," _satisfies_ me that it is _not_ taken from a duplicate picture of that in possession of the Knight of Kerry: though there certainly is a resemblance in the faces of the two portraits, yet the differences are many and decisive. Pennant says that there are "four other pictures in Great Britain in the same dress, and without any difference of feature," besides that at Dupplin Castle, from which his print was copied; but that of the Knight of Kerry must be reckoned as a sixth portrait, taken at a _much more advanced period_ of life: in it the wrinkles and features denote _extreme_ old age. The head-dresses are markedly different, that of Pennant being a _cloth_ hood lying back from the face in folds; in the Knight of Kerry's, the head-dress is more like a beaver bonnet standing forward from the head, and throwing the face somewhat into shade. In Pennant's, the cloak is plainly fastened by leathern strap, somewhat after the manner of a laced shoe; in the other, the fastening is a single button: but the difference most marked is this, that the persons originally sitting for these pictures, looked opposite ways, and, of course, presented different sides to the painter. So that, in Pennant's plate, the _right side-face_ is forward; and in the other, the left: therefore, these pictures are markedly and manifestly neither the same, nor copies either of the other. It does not concern us, in order to maintain the authority of our _Irish_ picture, to follow up the question at issue between Pennant and Walpole but I may here observe, that either must be wrong in an important matter of fact. Walpole, in a note to his "Fugitive Pieces" (Lord Orford's _Works_, vol. i. p. 210-17.), writes thus: "_Having by permission of the Lord Chamberlain obtained a copy of the picture at Windsor Castle, called The Countess of Desmond, I discovered that it is not her portrait; on the back is written in an old hand, 'The Mother of Rembrandt.'_" He then proceeds to prove the identity of this picture with one given to King Charles I. by Sir Robert Car, "My Lord Ankrom" (after Duke of Roxburg), and set down in the Windsor Catalogue as "_Portrait of an old woman, with a great scarf on her head, by Rembrandt_." Pennant's note differs from this in an essential particular; he mentions this picture at Windsor Castle thus: "_This was a present from Sir Robert Car, Earl of Roxburg, as is signified on the back; above it is written with a pen,_ 'REMBRANDT' (not a word of his _mother_), _which must be a mistake, for Rembrandt was not fourteen years of age in 1614_, at a time when _it is certain (?) that the Countess was not living, and ... it does not appear that he ever visited England_."