Sir James's collection, among which were a few capital pictures of the great masters, was sold in the following year; and with them his two sets of the cartoons, the smaller for seventy-five guineas, the larger for only 2001. a price we ought in justice to suppose was owing to the few bidders who had spaces in their houses large enough to receive them. They were purchased by the Duke of Bedford,* and are in the gallery at Bedford view of the House of Commons assembled, in which the prominent figure is Sir Robert Walpole. At Wimpole. Earl of Hardwicke. His known works of History and Allegory were: 1. The interior cupola of St. Paul's. 2. The Hall of Greenwich Hospital. 3. Apartments at Hampton Court. 4. At Sir Robert Clayton's house in the Old Jewry. The mythology of Hercules, and the story of Dejanira, from Guido. Destroyed. 5. Salon of Burlington-house. Destroyed 6. At Canon's, the ceiling of the staircase. Destroyed. 7. At Wootton, Bucks. Hall and Staircase, for which he was paid 3000l. in as many years. Burned. 8. Moor Park. Herts. 9. At Eastoneston, Northamptonshire, Staircase in chiaro. scuro. 10. The Hall at Blenheim. 11. The Altar-piece at All Soul's College, Oxford. 12. The Ceiling of the Chapel of Queen's College, Oxford. Some others, now no longer extant, are said to have been by his hand.] ⚫ [In 1800, when Bedford-house was taken down, they were bought in for the late Francis, Duke of Bedford, for 450l. who presented them to the Royal Academy, in Somerset house. house in Bloomsbury-square. In the same collection were drawings by one Andrea, a disciple of Thornhill, who died about the same time at Paris. In forming a just estimate of the talents of Thornhill, it is requisite to balance the extreme praise which was bestowed upon the Art, as applied by him, with the general disesteem into which it has now universally fallen. He was our best native painter, who could describe history or allegory upon an extensive surface. But as no works upon canons, like those of Rubens, were attempted by him, he does not enter into that class of painters, even as an imitator. He knew nothing of the Italian schools of painting, nor had ever seen their best examples, and probably formed himself entirely upon Le Brun, in the zenith of his fame when he visited France, as a young student. Pilkington who had learned his panegyrics in the foreign biography of painters, gives an opinion, to which modern critics will not subscribe. "His genius was well adapted to historical and allegorical compositions; he possessed a fertile and fine invention; and he sketched his thoughts with great ease, freedom and spirit. He excelled also equally in portrait, perspective and architecture; shewed an excellent taste in design; and had a firm and free pencil. Had he been so fortunate as to have studied at Rome and Venice, to acquire greater correctness, at the one, and a more exact knowledge of colouring at the other, no artist among the moderns might perhaps have been his superior. Nevertheless, he was so eminent in many parts of his profession, that he must for ever, be ranked among the first painters of his time." Highmore (the painter) who knew him well, asserts in his letters, published in the Gent. Mag. that he was very ignorant of drawing, and was totally incompetent, when he attempted the human figure, in a constrained posture. He says, that in ROBERT BROWN was a disciple of Thornhill, and worked under him on the cupola of St. Paul's.* Setting up for himself, he was much employed in decorating several churches in the city, being admired for his skill in painting crimson curtains, apostles, and stories out of the New Testament. He painted the altar-piece of St. Andrew Undershaft, and the spaces between the gothic arches in chiaro scuro. In the parish church of St. Botolph, Aldgate, he painted the transfiguration for the altar; in St. Andrew's, Holborn, the figures of St. Andrew and St. John, and two histories on the sides of the these emergencies, Thornhill always applied to Thomas Gibson, who sketched the outline for him. He did not however fail of his due meed of poetical incense. Young.] * [Highmore relates an anecdote of Brown, when engaged with Thornhill in this undertaking. They worked together upon a scaffold which was an open one. Thornhill had just completed the head of the Apostle, and was retiring backwards in order to survey the effect, heedless of the imminent danger as he had just reached the edge. Brown, not having time to warn him, snatched up a pencil, full of colour, and dashed it upon the face. Thornhill, enraged, ran hastily forward, exclaiming, Good God! what have you done? I have only saved your life! was the satisfactory reply.] organ. In the chapel of St. John at the end of Bedford-row, he painted St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, and even two signs that were much admired, that for the Paul's head tavern in Cateaton-street, and the Baptist's head at the corner of Aldermanbury. Correggio's sign of the muleteer is mentioned by all his biographers. Brown, I doubt, was no Correggio. BELLUCCI, an Italian painter of history, arrived here in 1716, from the court of the Elector Palatine. In 1722 he finished a cieling at Buckingham-house, for which the Duchesss paid him 500l. He was also employed on the chapel of Canons, that large and costly palace of the Duke of Chandos, which by a fate as transient as its founder's, barely survived him, being pulled down as soon as he was dead; and, as if in mockery of sublunary grandeur, the scite and materials were purchased by Hallet the cabinet-maker.* Though Pope was too grateful [The magnificent mansion at Canons was begun in 1712, and after the death of its founder, taken down, and the materials dispersed by auction in 1747. Singularly prophetic, (for the demolition was effected, only three years after the Poet's death,) were the concluding verses of Pope's Epistle on Taste. Another age shall see the golden ear Imbrown the slope and nod on the parterre to mean a satire on Canons, while he recorded all its ostentatious want of taste, and too sincere to have denied it, if he had meant it, he might To prove how frequently such a fate has recurred in this kingdom, to short-lived magnificence, it will be barely necessary to mention mansions of the greatest extent and sumptuosity which have been erected, levelled with the ground, and the materials of them dispersed, since the commencement of the last century. Eastbury, Dorset. Horseheath, Cambridgeshire. Moor Park, Herts. the wings and colonnade which formed the greater part. Bedford House, London. Blackheath, Kent. Wansted, Essex. Gunnersbury, Middlesex. Carleton House, London. Fonthill Abbey, Wilts. There is scarcely a county in England which does not furnish similar instances of the destruction of the once splendid residences of the Nobility and Gentry-not merely to rebuild them. How many more are " left untended to a dull repose !"] * [Dr. Johnson, who had many opportunities of investigating the charge of Pope's ingratitude to the Duke of Chandos, expresses the following opinion in his Lives of the Poets, Pope p. 113. "The receipt of a thousand pounds Pope publicly denied; but from the reproach which the attack upon a character so amiable brought upon him, he tried all means of escaping. The name of Cleland was again employed in an apology by which no man was satisfied, and he was at last reduced to shelter his temerity behind dissimulation, and endeavour to make that disbelieved, which he had never the confidence openly to deny. He wrote an exculpatory letter to the Duke, which was answered with great magnanimity, as by a man who accepted his excuse, without believing his professions." "It is a remarkable circumstance, that Warburton, in his first edition of Pope's works, admits the application of his satire to Canons, by observing upon this passage, that "had the poet lived only three years longer, he had seen his pro |