Maria Theresa was possessed of great beauty and a fine presence. The dignity of her exalted rank was worn with regal grace. “Her figure was tall, and formed with perfect elegance; her deportment, imposing and majestic; her features were regular; her eyes were gray, and full of lustre and expression; she had the full Austrian lips, but her mouth and smile were beautiful; her complexion was transparent; she had a profusion of fine hair; and, to complete her charms, the tone of her voice was peculiarly soft and sweet. Her strict religious principles, or her early and excessive love for her husband, or the pride of her royal station, or perhaps all these combined, had preserved her character from coquetry. She was not unconscious of her powers of captivation, but she used them not as a woman, but as a queen; not to win lovers, but to gain over refractory subjects.” It is recorded to her praise, “that she desired to be informed of every act of the administration; that she afforded the poor and humble, as well as the noble and rich, free access to her presence; that she listened benignantly to all, either granting their petitions, or, if she denied them, giving reasons for her refusal, without delusive promises or vague evasions. During a forty years’ reign she invariably showed a love of justice and truth; and she stated, as a principle of her conduct, that it is only the pleasure of alleviating distress and doing good to the people that can render the weight of a crown supportable to the wearer.” In the year 1765, the Emperor Francis I. died. His loss was sincerely mourned by Maria Theresa, who was devotedly attached to her husband. She ever after wore mourning for him, and frequently visited the imperial mausoleum where he was entombed. In anticipation of her own death she caused her coffin to be made, and secretly sewed upon her own shroud. She was afterwards buried in the grave-clothes thus made by her own hands. Upon the death of the Emperor Francis, her eldest son received the imperial crown as Joseph II. But Maria Theresa continued to hold the first place in the government until her death. Maria Theresa gloried in her power of being able to be a public benefactor; it pleased her to bestow benefits. She richly deserved her title of “Mother of her people”; and she declared just before her death that, “if anything reprehensible had been done in her name, it was certainly without her knowledge, as she had always desired the welfare of her subjects.” Her annual private charities and donations amounted to more than eighty thousand a year; and so great was her benevolence that when her son Joseph was accused of not being generous, he replied: “If I gave like my mother, we should soon have nothing left to give away.”