An inscription beneath runs in English: “I was not in safety, neither had I rest, and the trouble came.” This is repeated in Latin, French, and Italian. [Illustration: PENELOPE BOOTHBY’s MONUMENT.] The white marble effigy, showing the child lying on a mattress, one of the most simple and yet most beautiful examples of monumental sculpture, is the work of Thomas Banks, R.A., and is perhaps the most celebrated piece of sculpture in England. I do not know why Sir Brooke chose to express his sorrows chiefly in Italian. Long inscriptions in that language appear on the marble, carefully translated in one of the books for which he was responsible: All our joys are perished with thee alone, But thou art happy and blessed, my dear Penelope, who, by one touch of Death, hast Escaped so many and so great miseries. * * * * * Those that descend into the grave are not concealed from Heaven. * * * * * Thy locks of pure shining gold, the lightening of thy angelic smile, which used to make a Paradise on earth, are now become only a little senseless dust. * * * * * Beauty, this then is thy last asylum! Her tomb does not yet contain all: it waits for the rest of its prey:—it will not wait long. But “hearts do not break, they sting and ache,” and Sir Brooke survived for years afterwards. The love Sir Brooke Boothby bore his little daughter is reflected in many ways. He wrote and printed a considerable volume, _Sorrows Sacred to the Memory of Penelope_; but he was something by way of a literary gent and nursed his grief for the purpose of increasing his output; and even then his tearful cantos made but a few pages, so he filled out the book with other literary exercises. But he did not _sell_ his book: he did not do as did our own modern What’s-his-Name, who wrote a poem on the death of his wife and sold it to an editor. Even more famous than the celebrated monument to Penelope Boothby is the portrait of her painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1788, and familiar to most people in the engravings after it. The original picture was bought at auction, at the Windus sale of 1859, by the Earl of Dudley, for eleven hundred guineas, and in 1885 it was bought by Mr. Thwaites for no less than £20,000. It was the direct inspiration of Sir John Millais’ equally famous “Cherry Ripe,” painted as a portrait of the little Miss Ramage, who had gone to a fancy-dress ball in the character of Penelope. The inspiration of the monument itself has been very marked. The “Sleeping Children” by Chantrey in Lichfield Cathedral is due to Mrs. Robinson, the mother of them, asking Sir Francis Chantrey, whom she had commissioned, to base his work on the monument to Penelope. The sculptor accordingly visited Ashbourne and made a sketch from the work of Thomas Banks.