Alas, this was but too prophetic! Before she was fifty years old she lost her sight, and gradually the light of reason also, and her darkness was complete. An Italian writer tells the following story: "Nature had endowed Rosalba with lofty aspirations and a passionate soul; her heart yearned for the admiration which her lack of personal attraction forbade her receiving. She fully realized her plainness before the Emperor Charles XI. rudely brought it home to her. When presented to him by the artist Bertoli, the Emperor exclaimed: 'She may be clever, Bertoli mio, this painter of thine, but she is remarkably ugly.' From which it would appear that Charles had not believed his mirror, since his ugliness far exceeded that of Rosalba! Her dark eyes, fine brow, good expression, and graceful pose of the head, as shown in her portrait, impress one more favorably than would be anticipated from this story." Many of Rosalba's works have been reproduced by engravings; a collection of one hundred and fifty-seven of these are in the Dresden Gallery, together with several of her pictures. <b>CASSATT, MARY.</b> Born in Pittsburg. Studied in Pennsylvania schools, and under Soyer and Bellay in Paris. She has lived and travelled much in Europe, and her pictures, which are of genre subjects, include scenes in France, Italy, Spain, and Holland. Among her principal works are "La tasse de thé," "Le lever du bébé," "Reading," "Mère et Enfant," and "Caresse Maternelle." Miss Cassatt has exhibited at the Paris Salon, the National Academy, New York, and various other exhibitions, but her works are rarely if ever exhibited in recent days. It is some years since William Walton wrote of her: "But in general she seems to have attained that desirable condition, coveted by artists, of being able to dispense with the annual exhibitions." Miss Cassatt executed a large, decorative picture for the north tympanum of the Woman's Building at the Columbian Exhibition. A writer in the _Century Magazine_, March, 1899, says: "Of the colony of American artists, who for a decade or two past have made Paris their home, few have been more interesting and none more serious than Miss Cassatt.... Miss Cassatt has found her true bent in her recent pictures of children and in the delineation of happy maternity. These she has portrayed with delicacy, refinement, and sentiment. Her technique appeals equally to the layman and the artist, and her color has all the tenderness and charm that accompanies so engaging a motif." In November, 1903, Miss Cassatt held an exhibition of her works in New York. At the winter exhibition of the Philadelphia Academy, 1904, she exhibited a group, a mother and children, one child quite nude. Arthur Hoeber described it as "securing great charm of manner, of color, and of grace."