Farther on is another more celebrated woman, Christian Bruce, the second Countess of Devonshire, so distinguished in the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II. She had all the good qualities of Bess of Hardwicke: her sense, her firmness, her talents for business, her magnificent and independent spirit, and none of her faults. She was as feminine as she was generous and high-minded; fond of literature, and a patroness of poets and learned men:--altogether a noble creature. She was the mother of that lovely Lady Rich, "the wise, the fair, the virtuous, and the young,"[63] whose picture by Vandyke is at Devonshire-house, and there are two pictures at Hardwicke of her handsome, gallant, and accomplished son, Charles Cavendish, who was killed at the battle of Gainsborough. Many fair eyes almost wept themselves blind for his loss, and his mother never recovered the "sore heart-break of his death." There are several pictures of her grandson, the first Duke of Devonshire--the patriot, the statesman, the munificent patron of letters, the poet, the man of gallantry, and, to crown all, the handsomest man of his day. He was one of the leaders in the revolution of 1688--for be it remembered that the Cavendishes, from generation to generation, have ennobled their nobility by their love of liberty, as well as their love of literature and the arts. One picture of this duke on horseback, _en grand costume à la Louis Quatorze_, is so embroidered and bewigged, so plumed, and booted, and spurred, that he is scarcely to be discerned through his accoutrements. A cavalier of those days in full dress must have been a ponderous concern; but then the ladies were as formidably vast and aspiring. The petticoats at this time were so discursive, and the head-dresses so ambitious, that I think it must have been to save in canvass what they expended in satin or brocade, that so many of the pretty women of that day were painted _en bergère_. Apropos to the first Duke of Devonshire: I cannot help remarking the resemblance of the present duke to his illustrious ancestor, as well as to several other portraits, and particularly to a very distant relative--the first Countess of Burlington, who was, I believe, the great-grandmother of his grace's grandmother;--in both these instances the likeness is so striking as to be recognized at once, and not without a smiling exclamation of surprise. Another interesting picture is that of Rachael Russell, the second Duchess of Devonshire, daughter of that heroine and saint, Lady Russell: the face is very beautiful, and the air elegant and high-bred--with rather a pouting expression in the full red lips.