Again she departed for France, and, after the breaking out of the war between that country and England, pursued her journey to Italy. She established at Lodi a college for the education of young ladies on a plan she had arranged for a similar institution at Lyons. On the establishment of peace she returned to England, and became the tender nurse of her invalid husband, trying to solace the weary hours which were passed in weakness and pain. Upon Mrs. Cosway’s return, Smith informs us, “she had caused the body of their departed child, which her husband had preserved in an embalmed state within a marble sarcophagus that stood in the drawing-room of his house in Stratford Place, to be conveyed to Bunhill row, where it was interred, sending the sarcophagus to Mr. Nollekens, the sculptor, to take care of for a time. It is a curious coincidence that the same hour this sarcophagus was removed from Mr. Nolleken’s residence, Mr. Cosway died in the carriage of his old friend, Miss Udney, who had been accustomed, during his infirm state, occasionally to give him an airing,” and had taken him out that morning, as the weather was fine. Maria heard the sound of the returning wheels, and, hastening down to receive her husband, found only his lifeless corpse. He had died suddenly, upon a third and last attack of paralysis, July 4, 1821, at the advanced age of eighty. The widow returned to Lodi, where her ladies’ college was still flourishing. The place was endeared to her by many happy memories, and there she was loved and respected by a large circle of friends. She died in 1821. In her style Mrs. Cosway appears to have taken much from Flaxman and Fuseli. In many of her works something fantastic is embodied, which is associated with more of the wild and terrible than we usually find in the creations of a mind at ease. No doubt her inconsolable grief for the loss of her child was the cause of this unfeminine peculiarity. She originated compositions from Virgil and Homer, as well as from Spenser and Shakspeare. The engraving from a portrait of Maria Cosway represents her in the bloom of youth, with a profusion of light hair dressed after the then prevailing mode. The fresh and delicate loveliness of the face is most attractive, and there is a wonderful beauty in the large, soft eyes, and the artless innocence that beams in their expression. The celebrated Mrs. Cowley, in a letter to her, thus speaks of her portrait: “If you can draw every body as justly as the fair Maria Cosway, you will be the first portrait-painter in the kingdom.”