of Mrs. Tighe to his book on "The Homes and Haunts of the Poets," he was unsuccessful in gaining any details of her life. Her portrait, painted by George Romney—that painter of so many beautiful women—remains to us, and was engraved in the octavo edition of "Psyche," published in 1811, just after her death. Gazing at that exquisitely lovely face, which recalls the classical models of ancient Greece, we are reminded by Byron's well-known lines:—
She walks in beauty, like the night,
Of cloudless dimes and starry skies,
And all that's good of dark or bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.
Thus mellowed to that tender light.
Which heav'n to gaudy day denies.
The shape of Mrs. Tighe's face in Romney's portrait is a perfect oval, long dark brown tresses fall on her shoulders, and stray across her low but intellectual brow, the deep-blue eyes—very large and pellucid—are raised to heaven. The lower part of the face is exquisitely formed—the mouth a perfect Cupid's bow—the whole expression is sweet, innocent, and refined, though tinged with indescribable sadness.
"Early death was pale upon her cheek," for, after many years of suffering, she died of consumption in her 38th year. She was the child of the Rev.
