After the death of her friend and patron, the elector, she returned to Holland, and prosecuted her art with unwearied industry. She mourned his loss as her friend and the generous protector of art; but her works met with as great success, and Flanders and Holland even murmured at their being taken to Germany. The advance of old age could not obscure her rare gifts; the pictures she executed at eighty were as highly finished as at thirty. To genius of the highest order she united all the virtues that dignify and adorn the female character. Respected by the great--beloved even by her rivals--praised by all who knew her--her path in life was strewn with flowers, till at its peaceful close she laid her honors down. She died in 1750, at the age of eighty-six, having been married fifty years and five years a widow. Her works are rarely seen, from the difficulty of inducing possessors in Holland to part with them. At Amsterdam there are four beautiful pieces. Their chief merits are surprising vigor and a delicate finish, with coloring true to nature. Flowers, fruits, and insects seem full of fresh life. Rachel’s style combined a softness, lightness, and delicacy of touch with a certain grandeur of disposition and powerful effect, which caused the universal recognition of a manly spirit and nobility of feeling in her works. In her portrait her hair is short, with low-necked dress and beads round the throat. The features of the artist, large and strongly marked, bear the same brave, open character that spoke in the grouping and arrangement of her flowers--in the freedom that marked her compositions and was blended with their surprising lightness and grace. In the depth of coloring a delicate poetic fragrance seemed to be infused. CHAPTER IX. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.