fragments, staining them with tobacco water to give the whole an appearance of age. After ten years of profitable study at Rome, Nollekens returned to London, where the simplicity of his manners, and great skill in sculpturing busts, procured him from the rich and great, ample employment and munificent remuneration. His studio became a kind of fashionable lounge for individuals of the highest rank. He had, also, a good deal of employment, in a branch of the art still less favourable than bust making, for the display of its higher powers; namely, that of common place monuments for common place people. An exception, however, must be made in favour of the monument to Mrs. Howard, of Corby Castle, which is one of his best productions, pathetic in conception, elegant and tasteful in execution; as a work of art, very far superior to that, by him, of Captains Lord Robert Manners, Bayne, and Blair, in Westminster abbey, which, though a sumptuous, is but a frigid, mechanical work. Notwithstanding his numerous commissions, Nollekens found time to undertake several statues, and pieces of poetic sculpture, among which were no fewer than five Venuses, one of them since known by the name of the Rockingham Venus. A rigid economist himself, he married a lady of still more parsimonious habits; and at his death on the 23rd of April, 1823, was found to be possessed of upwards of £200,000, all of which, with the exception of a few trifling legacies, he bequeathed to his friends, Francis Palmer, and Francis Douce, the well-known antiquary; very much to the disappointment of a swarm of greedy legacy-hunters. The chief attraction about his busts, on which his fame will chiefly rest, is ease and simplicity; the chief defect is want of dignity and sentiment.

JOSEPH CERACCHI was a young Italian sculptor of rising talents. Sir J. Reynolds sat to him for the only bust in marble, which was ever executed of that illustrious painter. Ceracchi was in France during the Revolution, and having been implicated in the plot to destroy Buonaparte, suffered under the guillotine.

At the end of the gallery, nearest to the entrance from the grand staircase, there are a Venus Couchante, and a head of a Nun, in statuary marble, by a young Italian artist, purchased by the Duke, when in Italy. From this point, it will be as well to notice, in succession, the pictures with which the gallery is adorned.

Portrait of Lady Tyrconnel in a sitting posture, dressed in white satin, with feathers in her hair. Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Intombing of Christ. Luca Penni. Purchased for £100. The Virgin stands near a square tomb absorbed in grief, while attendants are placing the dead Christ in the tomb. In this latter figure, the general effect of colouring and position is alloyed by an appearance of muscular life in the right arm and hand. Large picture.

LUCA PENNI, a contemporary of Raffaele, arrived in England in 1537. He is said not only to have designed for engravers, but to have engraved himself. There is no certain date of his death, or of his leaving this country.

Landscape. A copy of the large tree by Claude Lorraine. So far as its elevation permits an opinion to be formed, it appears to be a very successful copy. Painted by the late

Duchess of Rutland.

Christ disputing with the Doctors in the Temple.—West. A small picture, in which there is an absence of dignity and felicitous grouping of the figures. £40.

BENJAMIN WEST was born in the province of Philadelphia, Oct. 10, 1738. His father was of English extraction, but had emigrated to America, and married a person of the same religious tenets,-those of the people called quakers. Being introduced by Archbishop Drummond to George III, that monarch continued his warm and steady patron as long as his faculties continued unimpaired; employing him on historical subjects, and portraits of the royal family, and procuring his nomination to the presidency of the Royal Academy. West died 11th March, 1820, in the 82nd year of his age; and was buried beside Reynolds, Opie, and Barry, in St. Paul's Cathedral. The pall was borne by noblemen, ambassadors, and academicians. His productions are very numerous, and were warmly criticised during his life, by admirers and opponents. The general impression now is, that they are for the most part, "cold, formal, bloodless, and passionless."