94 THE XORTH STAFFORDSHIRE HOUNDS. 



hundreds of specimens, mostly views of scenes in her native Sutherland, drawn 

 on the spot, and coloured with but two or three tints, blue and grey and sepia. 

 Delightfully tender and delicate are these landscapes, the efifects of cloud and 

 mist being admirably given. In those days an amateur artist had not the facilities 

 of coming before the public that now exist, and these admirable drawings — real 

 works of art — are known to but very few. Lady Sutherland, however, did 

 publish, or rather had printed, a book of her drawings. This consists of a series 

 of etchings illustrating scenes in the Orkneys and on the north-eastern coast of 

 Sutherland ; they include some interiors of ancient churches in which Wenceslaus 

 Hollar would have delighted. That a woman of such talent, and filling so 

 worthily a high place in the society of her day, should know and be known by 

 the most eminent men of her country was a matter of course. Besides Walter 

 Scott, she knew and corresponded with witty and learned Kirkpatrick Sharpe, 

 Lord Murray, and other of the most eminent of her countrj'men. Owing to the 

 false delicacy that destroys letters after the death of the writer, few of hers 

 remain. . . . An artist herself, the Duchess-Countess must have had fi-equent 

 opportunities of seeing and knowing the best of her day — from Romney and 

 Eeynolds dowTi to Opie and Lawrence, all of whom painted her portrait. Among 

 Scotch artists she may have remembered Ramsay as a child ; she certainly knew 

 Wilkie in her old age. To poor Haydon she was a kind friend, as an entry in 

 that gifted but unfortunate artist's diary proves. It was probably owing to his 

 wife's influence and her love of art that Lord Stafford distuaguished himself as an 

 enlightened and liberal patron of art. When he succeeded to the property of 

 the Duke of Bridgewater, he found himself the omier of the finest private collection 

 of paintings in the world. The nucleus of this gallery — known throughout the 

 art-world of Europe as the Bridgewater, or later on, as it was named, the Stafford, 

 Gallery — had been formed by the purchase of the finest pictures in the celebrated 

 Orleans collection, sold to Lord Carlisle, to the Duke of Bridgewater. and to the 

 Marquis of Stafford, shortly after the Revolution. Lord Stafi'ord deserves credit 

 for having been one of the first owners of works of art in London to throw open 

 his gallery to the public. . . . Lord Stafford, or — to call him by his last title, 

 which he only lived to bear a few months — the first Duke of Sutherland, 

 encouraged by liberal purchases modern British art : Jackson, Stothard, Haydon, 

 Bird, Westall, Danby, Opie, Howard, Prout, Phillips, Lawrence, and many more 

 English artists, are represented with more or less success on the walls of Stafford 

 House, Trentham, Lilleshall, and Dunrobin." 



The second Duke, who was born in 1786, had been the 

 playmate of the Dauphin in Paris, and could well recollect 

 the terrible days of the French Revolution. His life was 

 throughout a tranquil one, spent quietly amongst his 

 books and works of art. He was debarred by deafness 

 from taking any part in public life, and from the same 

 cause shut out from general society, so that he passed the 

 greater part of his life in comparative retirement. He was 

 fortunate in his marriage ; in his wife (before her marriage 

 Lady Harriet Howard) he found a companion and help- 

 meet in every way suited to him, so that, in spite of the 



