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THE SUBSCRIBERS TO THIS WORK

Who have not hitherto received the SUPPLEMENTAL Number to the last Volume (No. XXXIII.), published last month, in consequence of which their set is incomplete, are respectfully informed that they may receive it in the best state, and perfection of the Plates, by giving orders to their respective Booksellers in town or country.

THE ARTIST.

In the present Number of the ARTIST we have been disappointed in not being able to introduce the succeeding PLATE of Mr. BARRY's suite of Pictures, the series of which was commenced in our Supplemental Number; to remedy this disappointment, the Proprietor engages to give Two in the next succeeding Number of "La Belle Assemblée," from the same series; and to complete the suite in the Magazine for September.

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Bell's

COURT AND FASHIONABLE

MAGAZINE,

For AUGUST, 1808.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

OF

ILLUSTRIOUS LADIES.

The Thirty-Fourth Number,

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LADY ELIZABETH WHITBREAD.

ing.

LADY ELIZABETH WHITBREAD, a || nicious perhaps, is infinitely more disgustmost beautiful and correct likeness of whom embellishes the present Number of our Magazine, is the daughter of the late Earl Grey, and sister to the present.

Her Ladyship was married in the year 1788, to Samuel Whitbread, Esq. Member for Bedford; by whom she has a family of two sons and two daughters.

It is the pride of this Work to keep its pages equally unpolluted by censuse and by adulation; to alarm the feelings of no ose connected with those whose Portraits we introduce, by menaces of flattery which would prove perhaps more mortifying to their sensibility than a style of investigation of a different kind.

Of Lady Elizabeth Whitbread all we shall presume to say is, that she is a cha racter of tranquil and domestic worth; that she is known as her rank requises she hould be known to the public; but that the sphere of her pleasure is the same with that of her duty; in the performance of which she is excelled b、 none of those who are called to the same elevated situations of

It is not our object to accompany the Portraits of the distinguished Personages which we introduce into La Belle Assemblée || with any copious details of private biography; nor, however strong the solicitations of interest may operate upon us, from the avidity with which anecdotes of private character are received by the public, shall we ever deviate into a practice which has been abused to so many unworthy purposes, which, as policy or revenge has alter-life, and that she has ever conducted hernately dictated, has been employed to cen- self with the greatest kindness to all, with sure and defame, or to eulogise in a toue unblemished prudence and unassuming ⚫t adulation which, though not so per- dignity.

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MR. EDITOR,

ACCOUNT OF LADY LIVINGSTONE.

NOT many months past, I chanced to be fravelling through Scotland, literally travelling, as I visited most part of the Highlands on foot. The more humble I appeared, the more information I expected to gain: I was not disappointed. Passing near the town of Kilsythe, I was tempted to visit the parish church, in which are deposited the embalmed remains of the once celebrated Lady Livingstone. Her maiden name was Jean Cochrane; which every one acquainted with Scottish history must know. She was first married to Claverhouse, the notorious persecutor, and on his death to Livingstone, Lord of Kilsythe, by whom she had one child.

Lord Livingstone being obliged to fly his country, she accompanied him to Holland. The barbarous government of those days offered a high reward for him or her-dead or alive. The consequence was, that the joists of the roof of the room in which she was sitting with the child on her knee, were suddenly cut; Lord Livingstone, who was reading a letter at the window, sprang out of it. He was saved; but his wife and child perished. With much difficulty he recovered the bodies, which, having embalmed, he sent and had privately interred in the family vault at Kilsythe, in Scotland. After resting there for upwards of one bundred and twenty years, a student at Kilsythe prevailed upon the sexton to open the vault :—the leaden coffin was explored, and the || bodies of both the mother and the child found in so perfect a state of preservation, that they appeared rather sleeping than dead.-Lady Livingstone was full dressed; the ribbons about her had not lost their gloss or stiffness the colour was in her cheeks that were pitted by the small-pox, and the mark of the needle with which she had sewed was perceptible on the end of her finger. The child was so beautiful, that the present Lord Elphinston who visited the vault, took it up in his arms and kissed it. These particulars I have from a gentleman resident on the spot, and who was present at the time.

About twelve at night, on the twenty-seventh of October last, I repaired to this vault; a stone was removed, and the sexton went down, with a torch. I am not superstitious, but I hesitated before I plunged myself into the "narrow house," of the departed. Mr. Fitz

||

simmons, a friend who accompanied me, seeing this, set the example, and descended. I then, with some difficulty, pressed myself down, as the passage will scarcely admit a tolerably sized man. The descent was about twenty steps, and the roof of the passage had shrunk so much that it appeared to be falling upon us. At the end of the steps we entered an apartment, which permitted us to stand upright; the place was covered with bones, crumbling into dust, which rose up to our mid-leg at every step. The roof of the vault was quite damp, and from it water was continually dropping. In a corner of this horror-breathing place, exposed to the view of every clown who could bribe the sexton with twopence, lay the reinaius of Jean Cochrane, one of the highest in rank, and the most celebrated beauty in Scotlaud. I approached with awe; I felt that I was violating the place of the grave, yet curiosity impelled me forward, and I applied to myself the excuse of the sinner,-"Many have done so before me: why should not I?”

The child was laid in the same coffin, and had much the same appearance as the mother. I pressed my finger on the bodies of each; the flesh yielded to my pressure, and returned to its former situation when I raised my hand, in the same manner as that of a living person. When first opened, the coffin was half filled with a liquid, in colour like brandy, that shed a sweet perfume. Dr. Jeffrey, of Glasgow, took part of it away in order to ascertain what it consisted of. I inquired, but could not learn the result of his endeavours.

Pieces of flesh were ut off from this corpse and carried away by many. I was told, "that for a trifle I might cut a piece of the body likewise."-I stared at the being who proposed it, with agony of astonishment; a dead coldness affected my whole body, and, with tottering steps, I hastened to quit the mansion of death polluted by the footsteps of the damned-as those appeared who made such a proposition to me. I felt myself relieved when I breathed the pure air: but my brain was a whirlpool of ideas, turning incessantly round, and yet no one departing from its vortex. A gentleman, high in ecclesiastical dignity, I was told, first exhibited Lady Livingstone as a public show, for a stated price; how far this inay be true i will not pretend to determine.-Yours, &c.

AMBULATOR.

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