the printer's aid, is a poet to few or none; the more fertile his mind in inventing and and a sculptor who cannot afford to cut his supplying wants. Wilkie's converting conceptions in marble is, like a painter, a chest of drawers into an easel, by pulling confined to chalk and outlines. It was so out one of the drawers and resting the head with Chantrey before his name was known. of his canvass against the cornice, is, when His bust of Horn Tooke (one of his very compared with the youthful inventions of early works) he was too poor to have cut others, a silly expedient. The person or in marble. It was sent to the Royal Acad- parties who told the story of Chantrey's emy Exhibition in plaster, and though butter-modelling would prefer the juvenile Nollekens gave it one of his emphatic words of approbation, it was comparatively lost to the world, for the multitude of visitors adopt as their rule in going the round of the sculpture-room to look only at such works as are in marble. When in plaster, they seem to the ignorant many to lack the seal of approbation, which the transfer from plaster to marble would seem to imply. It is not enough to suffer from the opaque material they are in, but they must lie under the double disadvantage of a vulgar prejudice.

We shall not stay to inquire whether marriage made Flaxman an artist, or unmade him, as Reynolds thought and told him; it is enough for us that marriage made Chantrey, for he got money with his wife, could afford to wait for patrons, and had the means of purchasing marble. The first use he made of his wife's money was to transfer the head of Horne Tooke to marble. What was inimitable in clay was matchless in its new semi-transparent material. All the cunning and sagacity of the man are there. The eyes, colorless though they are, look as if scanning you from head to foot. There is no escape from the penetrating survey he is making of you. It was quite a new head in marble, and, if the reason is ever asked of the Royal Academy why they permit the exhibition of the same work twice, in plaster and in marble, this bust of Horne Tooke, if the plaster still exists, is more than sufficient to warrant them in adhering to so excellent a rule.

labor, if it ever existed, to a better position in the rooms than they would give to the clay of John Rennie or the marble of Sir Walter Scott. We know that Allan Cunningham said the story was a mere pastry-cook's invention, not only untrue, but unlikely.

It has been affirmed, both in conversation and in print, that our young sculptor had other obstacles to overcome than the want of clay or marble; he had, as an apprentice to a carver in wood, to conquer the dislike of his master to his working, even in his leisure hours, in any other line than the mystery he was bound to learn and his master to teach him. This master's name was Ramsay, and he lived in Sheffield. He has been long dead, but has a son still alive, who denies, we understand, that his father discountenanced in any way the juvenile efforts of young Chantrey. Some disagreement, however, we have been well assured, took place, and that Chantrey purchased up the remainder of his time from Ramsay before he had been well three years in his service. The poet Rogers has a table actually carved by Sir Francis. Our great sculptor recognized the table when his fame was established, and pleased the poet with the recognition.

Chantrey was designed by his father for the law; accident made him a carver in wood, poverty a painter, and his own genius a sculptor. The sight of some figures in the shop window of Ramsay attracted his attention on the very day he was to commence his study of the law. He stopIt is told of Chantrey that he had, when ped to examine them, and became irrecova boy, a greater difficulty to conquer in be- erably a sculptor. Cowley was made a coming an artist than the want of marble. poet, and Reynolds a painter, much in the It is said he was without clay, and that his same way. Allan Cunningham had a porfirst work was made in the butter he was trait in oil of Chantrey from Chantrey's to sell at Sheffield for his father, a farmer own hand. It was clever and characteristic, near Norton, in Derbyshire. Now, for our a good deal in the manner of Opie-the reown part, we do not believe one word of sult of a morning's work, when disappointed this; nay, we have the very best authority in a sitter. He had been a second Sir Joshua for saying that it is not in part only, but al- if he had not been Sir Francis Chantrey. together a lie. When a man dies there are His tact and talent had made him a good fifty, and more, ready to recollect instan- country attorney-a Morant, a Gillow, or a ces without number of precocious genius Snell, or any other respectable upholsterer, in the mighty dead; the greater the man, but his own genius made him the first and the greater the obstacles he overcame-best sculptor of his age.

He lost his father when but a mere boy, other Academicians not a little by saying, and his mother married again, much to the that Fuseli was the only decent scholar the dissatisfaction of Francis, their only child. Academy ever had, and that he, indeed, He still, however, continued to entertain a was only a scholar among painters: " Parr filial affection for her, and, though she lived said so," he would add, "and so did Dr. to a great age, she died without the sincere Burney." Sir Martin Shee, in one of his forgiveness of her son, who in all his letters, lectures, or addresses, to the students of and on all his letters, addressed her as Mrs. the Royal Academy, on the distribution of Chantrey, never recognizing her, even in the prizes, raised a question very easily conversation, by her own name. No one has answered, whether Raphael or Reynolds said a word of the cruelties of his step-fa- had painted one whit better with a Winklether, or of any thing injurious to his charac-man, a Walpole, or a Cunningham, to adter. It was the act of his mother that he nev-vise him? At the mention of the name of er overlooked-a step which occasioned, we Cunningham (and Allan was present), a may little doubt, the clause in his will in murmur of approbation ran through the which he ties down Lady Chantrey to a wid-room; but Academical brows began to lowowhood for life. Chantrey always thought er, and Shee was taxed next day, in a counit as something sinful in the widow of Napo- cil summoned for the purpose, with breakleon to marry, and was heard to commend ing one great rule of the Royal Academy, with a shrug of approbation the reply made the rule which prohibits any allusion whatby the great Duchess of Marlborough, That ever to a living individual. Sir Martin she, the widow of John Churchill, would Shee, a poet, got with a good grace out of never consent to become the wife of this seeming difficulty. "I made no referanother. "May a Scotch ensign get her," ence," said Sir Martin, "to Allan Cunning. said Vanbrugh, in an angry mood. When, at a dinner party in Chantrey's own house, one of the company was heard to allude to the widow of Sir Philip Sydney becoming the wife of the noble Devereux, Earl of Essex, Chantrey, a most attentive listener, did not seem to disapprove; but, when her third marriage was mentioned as a piece of history (for he was no great reader), his face blackened with horror at such forgetfulness of the dead. If our great sculptor had read more, he had thought less of so common an occurrence in the pages of biographical history. But Chantrey was no great reader, and if he had been Rajah of Lahore, or king in Oude, he had burnt his widow on his own funeral pile. It is the Chantrey's excellencies, obvious as they fault, indeed, of all our English artists, that were to the most common observer, were they paint too much, and read and reflect too not at first recognized beyond the discernlittle. Of all classes of men of genius they ing few or the then limited circle of his are the worst informed. The late Sir own private friends. The Royal Academy George Beaumont was always urging Wil- opened its eyes unwillingly to his merits, kie to read more. "You can never have for between 1804, when he exhibited in read too much," wrote Sir George; "War- Somerset House, and 1817, when his burton, with all his reading, had read but a "Sleeping Children" moved the hearts and tithe of what was worth reading in his own fired the tastes of all, there were thirteen days. Our stock of literature has since years of struggle, in which his talents found amazingly increased, and a mere spare a very slender meed of approbation. He hour, or half-an-hour reader can, even after was for many years an inveterate anti-Acaa Methuselah-like length of existence, have demy man, and it is but too true that his read but little." Of Chantrey's great rival, genius forced its own way into the Acadeor predecessor, in busts, Old Nollekens, it is my, and that before he had attained the entold, that the annual extent of his reading vied esquireship, and its further appendage was the annual Academy catalogue; of of R. A., he had ranked as one of the very President West, that he never read more first sculptors of his country, and one of than the passage he had to illustrate. Allan the most original of our island artists. His Cunningham used to vex Chantrey and rise into reputation and Academical honors

ham; I referred, indeed, to a Cunningham, but my reference was to the Cunningham who wrote upon Shakspeare." Chantrey and the whole council were at once satisfied with the imaginary commentator, and Shee, no doubt, chuckled at home over their ignorant credulity, as Chantrey did over his friend Cunningham, much to Allan's amusement, not his amazement. Allan knew too well the measure and value of the President's approval, and the extent of Academical ignorance. "He supports his want of acquired knowledge by keeping good company," says Evelyn of the great Duke of Marlborough. How true of Sir Francis Chantrey!

was slow beyond example. The modest Jupon the mind of the artist employed, and, Wilkie found a friend in Sir George Beau- in fact, that the conception and sentiment mont before he had been a year in London, of the group were supplied to the artist in but Chantrey was an Academician before the melancholy fates of the two sisters. that true judge and universal patron of The lady's name was Mrs. Robinson. genius had done more than acknowledge. his bow as he met him in the street. Chantrey was a proud man, he has been heard to say, when Sir George Beaumont first set foot within his studio.

The commission given, Chantrey set off to his friend Stothard, and engaged that poetic artist to make two or three sketches of two young girls lying asleep in each other's arms. Stothard made the necessary sketches, and received some fifteen guineas for an evening's labor. From these sketches Chantrey then began his own sketch in clay. He borrowed a bit from one, a bit from another, and the air and position from a third; imbued them all with his own good taste, and composed, after a fashion of his own, the lovely group that lends so great an attraction to Lichfield Cathedral. We have seen the several sketches made by Stothard for this monument; we have seen, moreover, Chantrey's first result, made from an attentive consideration of Stothard's indications, and we

The two "Sleeping Children" made a stir in the dominions of arts: the group was something new in English Sculpture, so unlike the epigrammatic conceits of the great Roubiliac, or the classic conceptions of the still greater Flaxman-a work at once domestic and poetic, having its origin in our very homes, and making its way to every heart. Thousands of eyes have moistened at the sight of this lovely and affecting group; thousands of tongues have dwelt upon its excellencies, and the pen of Mr. Bowles has poetized its tranquil pathos. Yet we have been told, and are told now, that the merit of the work belongs to Sto-have, as it were, the monument at Lichfield thard, and that Chantrey only turned to clay and marble a sketch which that graceful artist had drawn, with some care and much feeling, upon paper.

It is a common cry nowadays, that what ever is excellent is not original. That art can seize upon no new postures, or contrive no new sentiment, that the germ and substance of every thing new has its source and existence in something old. But this cry was found of no avail with the "Sleeping Children" of Sir Francis Chantrey; and the merit of a work which all conspired to praise, envy made over to another. We have something to reveal on this point, at once new and interesting.

before our eyes at this very moment. In Stothard's sketches (they still exist), the children lie very much as they lie in the finished marble, the attitudes of both are very similar; and any one who has seen the monument, and who was totally in the dark about the circumstances we are here relating, would say, we make little doubt, that these sketches were either Chantrey's first conceptions, or some young artist's hasty recollections of the finished marble. Perhaps we shall not go far wrong when we say that the commission gave the first idea of this monument, that Stothard supplied the leading sentiment and story, and that Chantrey, by elongating the figures, adding repose to the action, and all the graces of execution in which he was so great a master, completed the much-talkedof and much-admired monument at Lichfield to the two children. The snowdrops which the youngest had plucked, and which remain undropped from her hand, was a touch of poetic beauty, for which Chantrey was indebted to his friend and assistant Allan Cunningham. Chantrey, indeed, had many hints of a like nature from the same poetic quarter. Chantrey could adopt, if he could not conceive.

Two young and lovely girls, the one about eleven, and the other thirteen years of age, came both about the same time to unnatural ends. The younger, we believe, was accidentally burned to death, and the elder, soon after, when in the midst of health, ruptured a blood-vessel, and the two, who had lain together in the same bed when alive, were laid together, as it were, in one another's arms in the same grave. When time had lessened the severity of her grief, the widowed, and now childless mother, anxious to erect a monument over the grave of her children, visits the studio of Chan- It is not our intention in this paper to trey, and, pleased with what she saw around particularize the more general and wellher, commissions the monument from the known events of Chantrey's life, but to give young sculptor. We are thus particular, such sketches and recollections of our great because we wish to urge that the circum- sculptor as a long acquaintance can readily stances under which the monument was supply. No one knew him intimately but commissioned naturally forced themselves | Allan Cunningham, and he is gone, but not,

we are informed, without having left behind one got soothed with his condescension, him some most interesting sketches, much which was rather pointed and appropriate in Colley Cibber's style, of Chantrey, and than prostrate and of no meaning. His the many distinguished characters with friends were few, his acquaintances many. whom his own genius and his situation in No one ever acquired his thorough confiChantrey's studio had brought him ac- dence. If Allan Cunningham understood quainted. These will doubtless, some day, the business of his place and his actual reere long, see the light, and the public will ceipts, he knew very little of what he did hail their appearance as a most welcome with his money. Buying in and selling accession to the stores of British biographi- out, shares in mines, and heavy percentcal history. But Cunningham knew Chan- ages, were the usual subjects of his aftertrey, perhaps, too well. Nine-and-twenty dinner conversations. For a while Ameriyears of daily intercourse had let him see can securities were his chief delights; but into the secret springs and movements of when these took a turn downwards, and his friend's character, and a true history he saw more than a chance of losing some Chantrey's life from Allan Cunningham had £30,000, he became penurious, talked of been the hidden and public history of a man applying for a government pension, of putremarkable as much for his love of the ting down his carriages, and of purchasworld, and his intimacy with it, as he was ing a cheap Brougham at second-hand. for his miraculous power over marble in Horne Tooke, in early life, had impressed portraying the mind and character of man. him with the belief that we live in a very Mr. Cunningham, when asked about the corrupt world, and that, however well-inlife of Sir Francis, and urged on to write tentioned men were, they were by habit so desirable a work, hesitated, we are told, deceitful and dishonest. But Horne Tooke at the same time that he promised-with- did worse than this. He made Chantrey, drawing his promise, and again confirming we are afraid, if not a deist, a freethinker, it. He had no wish to write the life of Sir or one who did not think at all. Francis Chantrey; if he had told all, he had never been believed. The whole truth written down had drawn upon him the cry of ingratitude, and that another Smith had written the life of another Nollekens. To write a panegyric, or a half-and-half kind of life, was something he said he would never do; he must tell all or tell nothing. What Mr. Cunninghain was unwilling to do, and did not live to do, Mr. Jones, the Royal Academician, may still supply in part; he has half promised a Life, and, warmed with his legacy, may compose a panegyric upon his friend's character, or, disappointed at, perhaps, its smallness, hit him off to the life, as Leigh Hunt did Lord Byron.

His friends among the Royal Academicians were confined to a certain set. They were either blunt after his own peculiar manner, or gentlemanly after his own better and rarer fashion. From his brother workers in bronze and marble he kept pretty well aloof. The mild and uprightminded Flaxman was never seen within his studio. His friendship for Westmacott was nipped and dwarfed in its very infancy; while Baily incurred his hostility by an act not easily forgiven. In the sisterart of painting, it is enough to say that he offended Wilkie, and that he knew Sir Thomas Lawrence to speak to. But his friendships, while few, perhaps fickle and If we come to consider Sir Francis Chan- passionate, took, at times, romantic turns, trey as a man, there is not very much to and his purse-strings would open, on such admire about him, little to fly from, and lit- occasions, at auction-rooms to run up the tle to follow. His bluntness, now almost pictures of his friend to a high price, and proverbial, was, at times, extremely un- thus give a fictitious value to works which, pleasant, and in another man had been left to the common fate of indifferent picpositive rudeness. He affected singularity,tures, had sold for little more than the cost said odd things, had them repeated, got talked about, and gave offence. But he had still withal the art of unsaying an unkind thing; and, where he saw he had given offence (which he was far from slow in perceiving), had a rare and happy manner of reinstating himself as of old, and of sending you away impressed with the belief that he was your sincere well-wisher, and very much your friend and obedient humble servant. Enraged at his rudeness,

of canvass and frame. Chantrey, however, having taken these friends publicly by the hand, was often called upon to justify his judgment by pecuniary sacrifices.

In one of his fits of munificence he bestowed a statue upon Northcote. The story merits relation as illustrative of both painter and sculptor. It appears that Northcote, making his will, left the residue of his money to his friend Chantrey, to erect a statue to his memory in the cathe

"His hand had lost that sprightly ease

Which marks security to please."

We have heard Mr. Cunningham describe this scene as affecting in the highest degree. The bust is Mr. Weekes's, not Chantrey's, nor has it been exhibited.

dral church of Exeter. So little informed | then, as if certain that his power of touch was the painter of the sum he had brought had departed, sat down and burst into tears. together in a long life of most attentive He was like the border minstrel of Scott: parsimony, that a friend remonstrated a little against the greatness of the bequest, and asked Northcote what he thought was the residue he had to leave. "About two thousand pounds," said Northcote. "You are leaving five-and-twenty," said his friend; at which Northcote opened his weasel eyes to an unusual width, and so diminished the No English sculptor ever had so many residue he was to leave for his own monu- commissions as Sir Francis Chantrey. ment that it amounted to no more than a Flaxman made more designs, Westmacott bare thousand. Now this was insufficient has had a larger proportion of government for a statue on the scale on which Chan-work, and Nollekens amassed more money. trey was paid; but, as it had been the evi- Chantrey, indeed, seemed to have a monopdent wish of Northcote to behave liberally in this matter, Chantrey accepted the small residue and gave for £1000 a £2000 statue. "I thus administer," said Chantrey, "to the intentions of the dead."

Chantrey never took pupils, but he had young men working under him who enjoyed all the advantages of the place. Frederick Smith, Scoular, Ternouth, and Weekes, worked at different times under his superintending eye, but Frederick Smith alone gave any promise; and it was no unconcealed saying of Chantrey's that Fred. Smith (as he called him) was the only artist in his place with an eye in his head. Mr. Weekes had many advantages in Chantrey's studio (for Fred. Smith died young), but without the proper talent to avail himself of such advantages he has as yet done little. The last work that Chantrey really did model was the bust of the queen: Mr. Weekes had made a bust of the queen a little before. Only compare the two, and see the superior tact and taste displayed by Chantrey in contending with the difficulties of exact similitude.

oly of commissions. In busts he reigned supreme, without rival and without any particular envy. He was long in supplanting Westmacott in the manufacture of tablets and statues, bas-reliefs, and monuments, but at length he took the lead; and if a bust was voted, a statue subscribed for, or the sorrows of a disconsolate widow or widower to be allayed in marble, all ran to Belgrave Place and commissioned Chantrey. He took for a time all that was of fered to him, and people were content to pay for tablets with Chantrey's name at five times their real value; no one, however, quarrelled with his charges; they had the dearest, and, as they thought, the best. His income in this way averaged for many years from six to seven thousand pounds, in some years rose to ten and fifteen, but never, we believe, higher. This was about on a par with what Reynolds and Lawrence made, and is a large sum to draw annually in from art. Sir Peter Lely may have made more when in the height of fashion, and rumor talks loudly of the thousands upon thousands made annually in the manufacture of miniatures by Sir William Ross.

The success of Chantrey brought a shoal of sculptors to Belgrave Place and its

When we say that the bust of the queen was Chantrey's last work, we are not forgetful that the bust of Lord Melbourne is in fact the so-called last. But what are neighborhood-the spawn of the Royal the circumstances of the case? Chantrey, it appears, had received the royal command to make a bust of the premier for the gallery at Windsor. To receive was to obey. Lord Melbourne promised to sit, and named different days for the purpose; but such were the charms of office or the delights of Windsor, that while he continued minister he never found time to sit. He at last found time; Mr. Weekes modelled, Chantrey directed, and Allan Cunningham looked on. The clay animated under the touch, and grew at last into a perfect ogre. Chantrey fretted, tried the modelling tools himself, threw them aside, reassayed, and

Academy, students half-fed and half-informed, anxious to catch any commission too small for the Retiarius of the Row. There were Weekes, Theakstone, Ternouth, Mace, Hatchard, and Thomas, in Belgrave Place, with Heffernan and young Mr. Westmacott not far off. The shoal amused Chantrey, and he would latterly let a commission go by him to aid the more deserving of those about him. A better carver than Theakstone never lifted tools: he excelled in draperies, Mr. Heffernan excelled in carving busts.

As it was very well known that Sir Francis and Lady Chantrey were without even