Few things disappoint the reader more than the unaccountable change in the character of Katharine, Duchess of Buckingham, after she ceased, except by courtesy, to bear that name. She seems to have hastened, not only to plunge into a second marriage, but to have at last avowed, what she had during the whole of her life denied, the tenets of the Church of Rome. Henceforth she was opposed to the monarch by whom her husband, the Duke, had been overwhelmed with benefits. This painful alteration in one so gentle, so forgiving, so affectionate in her earlier life, is one of those anomalies in life that one cannot cease to regret, without being able to explain. CHAPTER IV. CHARACTER OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM--HIS PATRONAGE OF ART--HIS COLLECTION--THE SPANISH COURT DESCRIBED--COLLECTION BY CHARLES I.--FATE OF THESE PICTURES. CHAPTER IV. Whatever may have been the failings of the Duke of Buckingham as a husband, he marked his confidence in his wife by his will. That last act of his life gave the Duchess power over all his personal property, as well as a life possession of all his mansion-houses, with a fourth of his lands in jointure. That his debts were considerable, has been amply shewn during the course of the preceding narrative. Previous to his expedition to Rhé, he had wisely put his revenues into the hands of commissioners, and placed it out of his own power to manage or mismanage his own affairs. His occupations, as a courtier, as a minister, as an ambassador, and, lastly, as a general, sufficiently excuse his want of leisure for the control of his expenses, and the system of retrenchment requisite to relieve him from harassing liabilities. He left, however, an immense amount of capital locked up in pictures; and that famous collection which places him, as Dr. Waagen affirms, in the third rank as “a collector of paintings in this country,” came into the possession of his son. It was chiefly deposited in York House--that stately structure, so complete and so princely, that in 1663, when it had become the residence of the Russian embassy, Pepys was still amazed at its splendour, although thirty-five eventful years had shaken many a grand fabric to its fall. “That,” he says, “which did please me best, was the remains of the noble soul of the late Duke of Buckingham appearing in his house, in every place, in the door-cases, and the windows.”