This exordium of Hayley’s is, as it were, in the nature of a “preliminary announcement” of the separation between Romney and his wife, when five years later he resolved to try his fortune in London. [Illustration: MISS BENEDETTA RAMUS Viscount Hambleden] “In working rapidly and patiently at different places in the north, for a few years,” Hayley continues, “by painting heads as large as life at the price of two guineas or figures at whole length on a small scale for six guineas, he contrived to raise a sum amounting almost to a hundred pounds; taking thirty for his own travelling expenses, and leaving the residue to support an unoffending partner and two children, he set forth alone, without even a letter of recommendation, to try the chances of life in the metropolis.” That was in 1762; and for a much longer period than Shakespeare, and with no occasional visits to his family, Romney worked in London and became more and more famous, until, as we have seen, his decline set in. “The summer of 1799 came,” writes Allan Cunningham, “but Romney could neither enjoy the face of nature, nor feel pleasure in his studio and gallery. A visible mental languor sat upon his brow--not diminishing but increasing; he had laid aside his pencils; his swarm of titled sitters, whose smile in other days rendered passing time so agreeable, were moved off to a Lawrence, a Shee, or a Beechey; and thus left lonely and disconsolate among whole cartloads of paintings, which he had not the power to complete, his gloom and his weakness gathered and grew upon him.... In these moments his heart and his eye turned towards the north--where his son, a man affectionate and kind, resided; and where his wife, surviving the cold neglect and long estrangement of her husband, lived yet to prove the depth of a woman’s love, and show to the world that she would have been more worthy of appearing at his side, even when earls sat for their pictures, and Lady Hamilton was enabling him to fascinate princes with his Calypsos and Cassandras. Romney departed from Hampstead, and taking the northern coach arrived among his friends at Kendal in the summer of 1799. The exertion of travelling and the presence of her whom he once had warmly loved overpowered him; he grew more languid and more weak, and finding fireside happiness he resolved to remain where he was; he purchased a house and authorised the sale of that on Hampstead Hill.”