by the emperor and the royal family. Here he painted the emperor, in a gorgeous picture, without being falsely showy, or deficient in sobriety of effect. The archdukes, the archduchess (Charles), and her daughters; prince Schwartzenburgh, prince Metternich, Capo d'Istria, and other illustrious persons then at that capital, also sat to him.

From Vienna sir Thomas proceeded to Rome, and he had now the happiness of contemplating those master-pieces of ancient art, which other great painters had had the advantage of studying at an earlier period of life. He arrived at Rome on the 15th of May, 1819; and he there finished the portraits of the pope, and cardinal Gonsalvi.

At Parma, sir Thomas painted the portraits of the ex-empress Maria Louisa, and her son, young Napoleon of the latter he also made a beautiful drawing.

On the 11th of March, 1820, Mr. West, the venerable president of the academy, expired; and on the day after the funeral, the 30th of March, 1820, sir Thomas Lawrence was, without opposition, elected to succeed him. He arrived in England in the ensuing April, after an absence of eighteen months, and brought with him eight wholelength portraits for the king, the prince regent having ascended the throne on the death of his royal father in January. His majesty duly appreciated these superb works, and spoke of the honour which sir Thomas's talents, as well as his conduct upon the continent, had reflected on his prince and on his country. Desirous of testifying his respect and admiration, the king, through the medium of sir Thomas, conferred upon the presi

dency of the Royal Academy a gold chain and medal, bearing the likeness of his majesty, with the inscription, "FROM HIS MAJESTY, KING GEORGE THE Fourth, to THE PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY."

Immediately after the coronation, in July, 1821, his majesty directed sir Thomas Lawrence to paint a full-length portrait of him, in his coronation robes, seated in St. Edward's chair, with his regalia, as he appeared at the altar in Westminster abbey.

From the respect entertained in the place of sir Thomas's birth, Bristol, for his character, as well as for his talents, he was presented with the freedom of the city, in 1829, at the time when a similar compliment was paid to lord Eldon. The following is an extract of a letter to Mr. D. W. Acraman, in reply to his communication of this circumstance :—

"Russell Square, April 9, 1829. "MY DEAR SIR,-Your kind assurance now confirms to me, that I have received from my native city the very highest honour (the protection of majesty excepted) that could have rewarded my professional exertions. I beg you to express to those of your friends who, with yourself, have generously assisted in procuring it, the sincere gratitude and respect with which it has impressed me, and the attachment it has strengthened to the place of my birth, as well as the zeal with which I shall attempt to forward any measure conducive to its honour, and the improvement of its refined establishments. shall gladly take advantage of your offer for the exhibition of my two other pictures. Pardon some haste in which I write; and believe me to remain, with the highest es

I

teem, my dear Sir, your very faithful servant,

"T. LAWRENCE." "To D. W. Acruman, Esq. Bristol." In another letter, very recently received at Bristol, by Mr. John Hare, jun., sir Thomas, in enclosing a donation for the Anchor Society, expressed himself warmly interested in the welfare of his native city. He was elected an honorary member of the Philosophical and Literary Society at the Bristol institution; and to the exhibition of pictures in the institution he often liberally contributed, as a loan, some of his most beautiful performances.

Sir Thomas's last public duty was the delivery of the biennial medals, on the 10th of December, 1829, when the affectionate eloquence of his address was such, that it will never be forgotten by the students. At that period no idea could be entertained that the dissolution of this amiable and enlightened man was so rapidly approaching.

On the 24th of December, 1829, he dined alone with an old and confidential friend. In the course of conversation he observed that, from the regularity of his living, and the care he took of his health, he thought he might attain a good old age; but, nevertheless, he would wish to insure his life for 5,000l.; and, telling his age, he asked what would be the premium. He fixed on Friday, the 8th of January, to effect the assurance; on the previous day he expired! At this conversation he appeared perfectly well, and complained only that at night his eyes and forehead became heated, and he required cold water and a towel to bathe them. But this had been a practice with him years before.

Sir Thomas had long indulged himself in the hope of spending a week or a fortnight, including the Christmas-day of 1829, with his sister, Mrs. Bloxam, in Warwickshire. Always anxious on this account, in a letter to his sister, dated the 17th of December, he says, I am grieved to the soul that urgent circumstances keep me at this time from the comfort of seeing you; but, in the next month, I will certainly break away from all engagements to be with you."

After several intermediate letters, he wrote on Wednesday, January 6, 1830:—

"I meant, my dearest Ann, to be with you by dinner time tomorrow, and have made exertions to do so; but it may not, cannot be! You must be content to see me to a late, simple dinner on Friday. Pray pardon a disappointment so painfully given by your faithful and affectionate brother,

"THOMAS LAWRENCE."

On Saturday, the 2nd of January, 1830, he dined, in company with Mr. Wilkie, Mr. Jackson, and some other eminent artists, at the house of Mr. Secretary Peel, with whom he had for some time been in habits of intimate acquaintance. On Sunday he complained of pain in the neck and lower part of the face. From that day till Tuesday his malady seemed to increase and remit at intervals, and was considered inflammation in the bowels.

So late as the Tuesday he was busily employed in the committee of the Athenæum, making arrangements for the opening of the new house, where he was particularly animated on the subject of internal decoration, and took a great interest in procuring works of art to adorn the interior. He had himself promised to paint and preser'

a portrait of his majesty, to be placed in the library; and on Wednesday he felt himself so much better, that he worked for some time upon this picture. It was the last effort of his pencil; thus verifying his motto Loyal à la mort. His old and esteemed friend, Mrs. Ottley, and a part of her young family, spent the evening with him, when he appeared to be very cheerful. After their departure, however, he felt so much indisposed that he sent for his friend Dr. Holland, who conceived his case so dangerous that he even sat up with him the whole night. No idea of danger had been previously entertained. On Thursday he was so much better, that in the evening he received two of his friends; one of whom read to him an article in the New Monthly Magazine, written by Mr. Thomas Campbell, in answer to some observations in the Edin burgh Review upon Flaxman. After some easy and pleasant conversation upon this article, subjects of art, and general topics, the two friends left his chamber, and retired for a short time to an adjoining apartment. Presently they were alarmed by the servant's cries for assistance; and on running into the room, to their horror, they beheld sir Thomas a corpse. The servant related that, when he was called in, his master's arm was bleeding (he had been bled on Sunday). He leaned back in his chair, seemed much oppressed, and exclaimed—“I am very ill-I must be dying!" These were the last words he uttered. A post mortem examination, made by Mr. Green, in the presence of Dr. Holland and Mr. Foster Reeve, ascertained death to have ensued from an extensive and complicated ossification of the vessels of the heart.

Sir Thomas's prices towards the close of his career were as follows:Three-quarter (or head size), two hundred guineas; Kit-cat, three hundred; Half-length, four hundred; Bishop's half-length, five hundred; Whole-length, six hundred; Extra whole-length, seven hundred. Half the price paid down at the first sitting.

Sir Thomas Lawrence was considered so handsome in his early youth, that Mr. Hoare is reported to have said of him, that if he had to choose a head for a picture of Christ, he would select Lawrence for that study. This character he retained in an eminent degree through life. He was thought to resemble Mr. Canning, and he was proud of the resemblance. His person and countenance, as well as his general deportment, gave him the appearance of one to whom dignity came by birthright. He derived his fine but pensive cast of features, with his manly form and graceful action, from nature; but the charm of his conversation and manners arose from that which can alone impress the stamp of true gentility-intellect and goodness of heart. In early life, he lived much upon what is called "the Town," and improved himself in all fashionable accomplishments. He danced with infinite grace. He was a fine fencer, and a capital sparrer. At the latter exercise his attitudes and action were extremely beautiful. He was also passionately fond of billiards, at which he was a most graceful and successful player.

Sir Thomas was well acquainted with the ancient classics, as far as that acquaintance can be acquired by the medium of translations; for of Greek he was entirely ignorant, and his knowledge of Latin was

not extensive or profound. With foreign literature he was also conversant; but it was principally through the same medium. In the writings of his own countrymen he was sufficiently versed. His memory was extraordinary, and he had a charming faculty of reading and reciting poems. His tone of voice was soft, but it was clear, distinct, deep-toned, and ad

mitted of every variety of expression. He was once to have married a daughter of Mrs. Siddons ; but at that period his own income was extremely limited, and the father of the lady, who was then living, refused his consent. The object of his addresses died some years after of a pulmonary complaint.

Mr. Huskisson was born at Birch Moreton, in Worcestershire, on the 11th of March, 1770. He was the eldest son of William Huskisson, esq. who resided upon his patrimonial estate, called Oxley, in the parish of Bushbury, near Wolverhampton. His mother was Eliza beth, daughter of John Rotton, esq. In 1774, Mrs. Huskisson died suddenly and prematurely, a few hours after childbirth, leaving four children; namely, William, the subject of this notice; Richard, who has since died; Samuel, the present general; and Charles, who now resides near Birmingham. Mr. Huskisson, the father, married again, and had by his second wife several children, the eldest of whom is captain Thomas Huskisson, of the royal navy.

At his mother's decease, the late Mr. Huskisson was not five years old, and he was placed at an infant school at Brewood, in Staffordshire; when older, removed to Albrighton; and lastly, to Appleby, in Leicestershire.

Mr. Huskisson's mother was niece to Dr. Gem, a gentleman highly esteemed, as well for his medical skill as for his other scientific and literary acquirements. Dr. Gem had accompanied the duke of

Bedford on the embassy to France in 1762-3; and the society of the men of letters with whom he mixed, and the great facilities which Paris then afforded for the researches of science, decided him to fix his residence in that capital and its vicinity; paying occasional visits to his friends in England, and to his small family estate in Worcestershire. Dr. Gem always felt great interest in the children of his favourite niece, and having expressed a

wish, in consequence of the second marriage contracted by Mr. Huskisson's father, that the two eldest boys should be entrusted to his care, they were permitted to accompany him on his return to Paris in 1783. The late Mr. Huskisson was then between twelve and thirteen years old. It was his uncle's intention to make him a physician, with the view of introduring him as his own successor in the appointment attached to the embassy at Paris, but the circumstances of the time soon gave a different direction to his career. The other brother was destined to be a surgeon. Dr. Gem was a severely strict disciplinarian, and from the oddity of his notions and habits, ill-calculated to win a spirit but little predisposed to

the laborious study of a somewhat repulsive profession. With him, economy was ever the order of the day; and from this cause, perhaps, as well as with the view of preserving the elasticity of the mind during the hours devoted to study, it was his habit not to cat any thing until the usual time of dinner, about five or six o'clock in the afternoon. The observance of this rule he enforced upon his pupils; and the only mitigation they were allowed, consisted of a scanty portion of bread and fruit, with which they were sometimes permitted to break the miserable monotony of this diurnal penance. Such a system, it may be supposed, was by no means agreeable to the feelings, or suited to the constitution of youth; and it can excite no wonder to state, that William Huskisson, after a few years' experience of it, was so much reduced in flesh, that when he visited England, his family could scarcely recognize him, and it was only by great care that he was restored to his former vigour. This alone would have been sufficient to give him a distaste for medicine; but it was mainly to the exciting state of public affairs at the time that the alteration in his course of life was attributable. Situated as he was, it is scarcely matter of wonder, that young Huskisson caught the political contagion which was then abroad. With all the ardour natural to his years, of which he had then numbered but nineteen or twenty, he entered into the feelings of the revolutionary party, and became a warm supporter of principles and theories, which subsequent experience and a more matured mind, taught him to regard as visionary and dangerous. He was not, however, as has been as

serted, a member of the Jacobin club, nor did he approve of their violent and anarchical doctrines. He was one of those who sought only a salutary change in the government. The mistake on this point, which furnished his political opponents with apparent grounds for stigmatizing him as "an Ultra Liberal, and a furious Democrat," arose from his being a member of a society in Paris, entitled "La Société de 1789," or "Le Club de Quatre-vingt-neuf;" but that society was established by seceders from the Jacobin club, and in opposition to it. Its object was, to protect and defend the original principles of the Revolution of 1789 principles which the Jacobin club had, by its founders, been intended to promote, in opposition to the more democratic views which that club afterwards adopted. In a collection of pamphlets, there is a speech which Mr. Huskisson, on the 29th of August, 1790, addressed to "Le Club de Quatre-vingt-neuf." The subject of it is the policy of an additional issue of assignals. The only evidence of liberalism in the speech is a recommendation to meet the wants of the state, not by an issue of depreciated paper, but by the sale of national property. The only other association with which Mr. Huskisson was at that time connected was "The London Corresponding Society;" but he did not long continue his connection with the club, and, indeed, he was soon, by circumstances, called upon to make a more profitable use of his time and talents.

During his residence in France, Mr. Huskisson had become a perfect master of the French language; and the interest he took in public affairs had made him familiar with the