From the period of her marriage with the Earl of Blessington, her intercourse with eminent men and distinguished persons of various pursuits may be said to date.... She was then twenty-eight years of age, in the perfection of natural beauty, that bright and radiant beauty which derives its power not so much from harmony of features and symmetry of form, as from the animating influences of intelligence beaming forth from a mind full of joyous and of kindly feelings and of brilliant fancies--that kind of vivid loveliness which is never found where some degree of genius is not. Her form was exquisitely moulded, with an inclination to fullness; but no finer proportions could be imagined; her movements were graceful and natural at all times. The peculiar character of Lady Blessington’s beauty seemed to be the entire, exact, and instantaneous correspondence of every feature, and each separate trait of her countenance, with the emotion of her mind, which any particular subject of conversation or object of attention might excite. The instant a joyous thought took possession of her fancy, you saw it transmitted as if by electrical agency to her glowing features; you read it in her sparkling eyes, her laughing lips, her cheerful looks; you heard it expressed in her ringing laugh, clear and sweet as the gay, joy-bell sounds of childhood’s merriest tones. [Sidenote: Geniality and good humor.] There was a geniality in the warmth of her Irish feelings, an abandonment of all care, of all apparent consciousness of her powers of attraction, a glowing sunshine of good-humor and of good-nature in the smiles and laughter, and the sallies of wit of this lovely woman in her early and happy days (those of her Italian life, especially from 1823 to 1826), such as have been seldom surpassed.... Her voice was ever sweetly modulated and low. Its tones were always in harmonious concord with the traits of her expressive features. There was a cordiality, a clear, silver-toned hilarity, a correspondence in them, apparently with all her sensations, that made her hearers feel “she spoke to them with every part of her being.”... All the beauty of Lady Blessington, without the exquisite sweetness of her voice, and the witchery of its tones in pleasing or expressing pleasure, would have been only a secondary consideration. R. R. MADDEN: ‘Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Friendship with Lord Byron.] It is clear that the peculiar charm of Lady Blessington’s manner exercised its usual spell--that the cold, scorning, and world-wearied spirit of Byron was, for the time being, “subdued to the quality” of the genial and happy one with which it held converse--and that both the poet and the man became once more what nature intended them to be.