Who turned the starry arches of the sky;
Whose word ordained the silver Thames to flow,
Raised all the hills, and laid the valleys low;
Who taught the nightingale in shades to sing,
And bade the skylark warble on the wing;
Makes the young steer obedient till the land,
And lowing heifers own the milker’s hand;
Calms the rough sea, and stills the raging wind,
And rules the passions of the human mind.
This correspondence sets in a very beautiful light the character of this amiable and excellent lady, no doubt one of Watts’ attached friends, and intercourse with whom, through the long period of twenty years, must have been to him a frequent source of rest and enjoyment. When their intimacy commenced she was in immediate attendance on the Queen Caroline, wife of George I. In those days the attempts which subsequently were made by the Countess of Huntingdon to create a feeling of piety and purity in the neighbourhood of the court had not been commenced, the manners of the great were not favourable to goodness and virtue, and the general spirit of the time brings out into strong relief the character of this gentle and noble lady; seldom apparently free from illness, her thoughts usually move round those loftiest sources of consolation in which the highest or the humblest equally find the surest and most abiding alleviation and repose.