them. He puts them firm on their legs, but never lifts them into stilts. This is the voice not only of my own experience, but the experience of hundreds, and my conscience would never allow me to pass in silence any opportunity of defending him from the censure which his extreme politeness often brings upon him."

LAWRENCE'S SENSITIVENESS.

In 1823, while John Thurtell lay in prison, committed for trial for the murder of Mr. Weare, Sir Thomas Lawrence expressed a wish to be allowed, without observation, to take a glance at Thurtell, as he took his exercise in the prison-yard. This request was not only refused, but misrepresented as an application to take a cast of the prisoner's face, and this cruel misstatement found its way into the newspapers. Sir Thomas read this gross impeachment of his humanity with much pain one morning, when he had to wait upon George the Fourth at the palace to take a sitting for the celebrated "sofa portrait.” The Painter was so affected, and depressed in spirits that he could hardly proceed with his work. The King observed his distress, inquired the cause, and upon its being explained, expressed his sympathy with Lawrence's susceptibility.

But this sensitiveness conduced to the perfection of his art. "That fineness of feeling," said one of his most gifted friends, "which made him so sensible to the slights and caresses of the world, probably gave him in his art a delicacy of thought and of touch scarce ever surpassed: making him alike sensible to the utmost refinements of nature in his own labours, as well as powerfully alive to any deficiency in them, in the works of others. This, however, which made so much of the charm of his art, with which he could seize, and give an interest to the scarcely visible irregularities of beauty, and touch the feathers, or the silver tissue, with a lightness which seemed to suspend them in the air itself, was in him, as it always must be with genius, accompanied by a strength where strength was wanted, which gave to all that was fine and delicate its true value. When once asked what he was doing, he said, 'All uncertainty-taking refuge in difficulties."

His forgiveness of slight or injury has been shown in many instances in his conduct to Harlow, this was strikingly evident. His goodnature was exhaustless. He had not the

power to say nay, either for his purse or his pencil. A lady, who had been liberal in her invectives against him, requested him to make some change in the portrait of her mother after her death. A friend, on reading the request, said, "Why should you waste your time on her; she who heaps many a scandal on you with witty and persevering malice?" He replied, with a smile,—“Oh, never mind: I know she does as you say but nobody else can do what she wants, and I must do it for her;" and he did.

ON THE GENIUS OF FLAXMAN, BY LAWRENCE.

In Sir Thomas's Address to the Royal Academy, upon delivering the Medals to the successful candidates, on December 11, 1826, he thus descanted upon our greatest sculptor.

"Mr. Flaxman's genius, in the strictest sense of the word, was original and inventive. His purity of taste led him, in early life, to the study of the noblest relics of antiquity; and a mind, though not then of classical education, of classic basis, urged him to the perusal of the best translations of the Greek philosophers and poets; till it became deeply imbued with those simple and grand sentiments, which distinguish the productions of that favoured people. When engaged in these mingling studies, the patronage of a lady of high rank,* whose taste will now be remembered with her own goodness, gave birth to that series of compositions from Homer and the Greek tragedians, which continues to be the admiration of Europe. These, perhaps, from their accuracy in costume, and even from the felicitous union between their characters and subjects, to minds unaccustomed to prompt discrimination, may have conveyed the idea of too close an imitation of Grecian art. Undoubtedly, the elements of his style were founded on it; but only on its noblest principles on its deeper intellectual power, and not on the mere surface of its skill. He was more the sculptor of sentiment than of form; and while the philosopher, the statesman, and the hero, were treated by him with appropriate dignity, not even in Raphael have the gentler feelings and sorrows of human nature been traced with more touching pathos, than in the various designs and models of this estimable man. The rest of Europe know only the productions of his genius when it bent to the grandeur * The late Dowager Countess Spenser.

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of the antique; but these, which form its highest efforts, had their origin in nature only; and in the sensibility and virtues of his mind. Like the greatest of modern painters, he delighted to trace from the actions of familiar life, the lines of sentiment and passion; and from the populous haunts and momentary peacefulness of poverty and want, to form his inimitable groups of childhood, and maternal tenderness, with those nobler compositions from holy writ-as beneficent in their motive, as they were novel in design-which open new sources of invention from its simplest texts, and inculcate the duties of our faith.

"In piety, the minds of Michael Angelo and Flaxman were congenial. I dare not assert their equality in art—the group of Michael and the Fallen Angel' is a near approach to the greatness of the former; and, sanctified as his memory is by time and glory, it gained no trivial homage in the admiration of the English sculptor; whose Shield of Achilles-that divine work! unequalled in its combination of beauty, variety, and grandeur-his genius could not have surpassed.

"But I trespass too long on the various business of this evening. To be wholly silent on an event so affecting to us all, was quite impossible.*

"I know the great and comprehensive talents that are around me; I know the strength remaining to the Academy: but with long experience of the candour which accompanies it, I feel that I may safely appeal to this assembly, for their acknowledgment with mine, that the loss of Mr. Flaxman is not merely a loss of power, but a loss of dignity to the Institution-deep and irreparable loss to art-to his country and to Europe not to posterity-to whom his works, as they are to us, will be inestimable treasures; but who, knowing how short and limited the span that Providence has assigned to the efforts of the longest life, and the finest intellect; and learning that his genius, though its career was peaceful, had inadequate reward,-will feel it to be their happier destiny, to admire, and not to mourn him-to be thankful that he had existed, and, not like us, to be depressed that he is gone, to revere and follow him as their master, and not, as is our misfortune, to lament him as their friend!

"He died in his own small circle of affection ;-enduring

* Mr. Flaxman died on the 7th of December, 1826, aged 72; and on the 15th Sir Thomas Lawrence attended his funeral to the churchyard of St. Giles's-in-the Fields.

pain-but full of meekness, gratitude, and faith! recalling to the mind, in the pious confidence of his death, past characters of goodness; with the well-remembered homage of his friend

'And ne'er was to the bowers of bliss convey'd,

A purer spirit, or more welcome shade.'

PORTRAITS OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON,
BY LAWRENCE.

England's greatest hero is best known by the portraits painted of him by Sir Thomas Lawrence; of whose laborious painstaking the Duke seems, however, to have been occasionally impatient.

The Duke of Wellington once said Lawrence was a man of no mind. Set the thing before him, and he could do it; but he had no invention. Wellington stood for Lawrence three hours with his hands across. After he had done, he stepped down, and said, "Pshaw! that is not like my sword." "Please your Grace, I'll do it next time." "Do it now." "I must go to the Princess Augusta's." "Oh, no! you must put my sword right. It is really bad." This was done.

Yet Wellington was not always so impatient, but would take a lesson. Upon one occasion, when about to sit to another painter, he said, "I know-Lawrence told me how to sit."

There are four portraits of the Duke by Sir Thomas Lawrence, of each of which numerous repetitions exist.

The first in order of date is that representing the Duke with the Sword of State, painted for the Prince Regent, for the Waterloo Gallery at Windsor, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1815. This picture was engraved in line by Bromley, with the following inscription:-"The Duke of Wellington, as he appeared on the Day of Thanksgiving at St. Paul's, for the ratification of that Peace, the attainment of which his valour, genius, and wisdom had so essentially promoted; distinguished by the insignia of those honours with which a grateful country and applauding Europe had invested him, and bearing, by command, the Sword of England." This is a very dazzling picture, ambitious in style, with a very broad light from above and behind-where, also, is a view of St. Paul's. It is, however, by no means the most pleasing of Lawrence's portraits of the Duke.

The next is the portrait of the Duke, " in the Dress that he wore, and on the Horse that he rode, at the Battle of Waterloo," painted for Earl Bathurst, and exhibited in 1818. This is a very spirited moving picture: the Duke mounted on his charger, "Copenhagen," waving his hat, and giving the word for the Guards to make that eventful and resistless charge which decided the fortune of the day of Waterloo. Of this picture, Wilkie, who saw it before it went to the Exhibition, writes to Sir George Beaumont, 19th January, 1818:— "Sir Thomas Lawrence has almost completed his equestrian portrait of the Duke of Wellington. This I have seen, and think it a happy effort. He is dressed in a plain blue coat, and a large cloak of the same colour over it. It is the dress he wore at Waterloo; and, not being a regimental dress, has a very uncommon, though inherently military look about it. It is one of those images of the Duke that is likely to supplant every other; and I should not be surprised if it were to become as common throughout the country as Sir Joshua's Marquis of Granby. It is rather a dark picture, and I could wish that it had something of a quality which has almost gone out of fashion in the present day--I mean tone in the colouring." The third portrait, painted by Lawrence, is that done for Mr. Arbuthnot, in 1816. It is a half-length, representing the Duke in a military cloak, with the right hand thrown across to the left shoulder. This has been repeatedly engraved; in mezzotint, by Cousins and by Jackson; in line, by Dean Taylor and by Charles Smith; and in smaller sizes, in mezzotint, by M'Innes, Burgess, and others.

This was always the favourite portrait with the Duke; and we think not without reason; for the expression is very pleasing, combining manliness with delicacy and refinement of sentiment. It may be mentioned that the great Commander, though never betraying a particle of personal vanity in the little sense, was proud of the estimation in which he was held both by the public and a numerous circle whom he honoured with his friendship; and a very usual mode of marking his esteem was the presentation of a print of himself, generally the Arbuthnot one, with his autograph affixed, and in a plain little maplewood frame. This, for instance, was his usual souvenir to the hundreds of brides whom he had given away," and, probably, the most gratifying testimonial he could bestow. Only a few days before his death, he gave one of these modest keepsakes to an individual of illustrious rank.