Horne Tooke, in early life, had impressed him with the belief that we live in a very corrupt world, and that, however well-intentioned men were, they were by habit deceitful and dishonest. But Horne Tooke did worse than this. He made Chantrey, we are afraid, if not a deist, a freethinker, or one who did not think at all.

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 of 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 portraying the mind and character of man. Mr. Cunningham, when asked about the life of Sir Francis, and urged on to write so desirable a work, hesitated, we are told, at the same time that he promised-withdrawing his promise, and again confirming it. He had no wish to write the life of Sir Francis Chantrey; if he had told all, he His friends among the Royal Academihad never been believed. The whole truth cians were confined to a certain set. They written down had drawn upon him the cry were either blunt after his own pecuof ingratitude, and that another Smith had liar manner, or gentlemanly after his own written the life of another Nollekens. To better and rarer fashion. From his brother write a panegyric, or a half-and-half kind workers in bronze and marble he kept of life, was something he said he would pretty well aloof. The mild and uprightnever do; he must tell all or tell nothing. minded Flaxman was never seen within his What Mr. Cunningham was unwilling to do, studio. His friendship for Westmacott and did not live to do, Mr. Jones, the Royal was nipped and dwarfed in its very infanAcademician, may still supply in part; he cy; while Baily incurred his hostility by has half promised a Life, and, warmed with an act not easily forgiven. In the sisterhis legacy, may compose a panegyric upon art of painting, it is enough to say that he his friend's character, or, disappointed at, offended Wilkie, and that he knew Sir perhaps, its smallness, hit him off to the Thomas Lawrence to speak to. But his life, as Leigh Hunt did Lord Byron. 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 admire about him, little to fly from, and little to follow. His bluntness, now almost proverbial, was, at times, extremely unpleasant, and in another man had been positive rudeness. He affected singularity, 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,

and his purse-strings would open, on such occasions, at auction-rooms to run up the pictures of his friend to a high price, and thus give a fictitious value to works which, left to the common fate of indifferent pictures, had sold for little more than the cost 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."

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 monuChantrey never took pupils, but he had ments, but at length he took the lead; and young men working under him who en- if a bust was voted, a statue subscribed for, joyed all the advantages of the place. or the sorrows of a disconsolate widow or Frederick Smith, Scoular, Ternouth, and widower to be allayed in marble, all ran to Weekes, worked at different times under Belgrave Place and commissioned Chanhis superintending eye, but Frederick Smith trey. He took for a time all that was of alone gave any promise; and it was no fered to him, and people were content to unconcealed saying of Chantrey's that Fred. pay for tablets with Chantrey's name at Smith (as he called him) was the only art- five times their real value; no one, howist in his place with an eye in his head. ever, quarrelled with his charges; they had Mr. Weekes had many advantages in Chan- the dearest, and, as they thought, the best. trey's studio (for Fred. Smith died young), His income in this way averaged for many but without the proper talent to avail him-years from six to seven thousand pounds, self of such advantages he has as yet done in some years rose to ten and fifteen, but 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.

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 manufac ture of miniatures by Sir William Ross.

When we say that the bust of the queen was Chantrey's last work, we are not for- The success of Chantrey brought a shoal getful that the bust of Lord Melbourne is of sculptors to Belgrave Place and its in fact the so-called last. But what are neighborhood-the spawn of the Royal the circumstances of the case? Chantrey, Academy, students half-fed and half-init appears, had received the royal command formed, anxious to catch any commission to make a bust of the premier for the gal- too small for the Retiarius of the Row. lery at Windsor. To receive was to obey. There were Weekes, Theakstone, Ter Lord Melbourne promised to sit, and named nouth, Mace, Hatchard, and Thomas, in different days for the purpose; but such Belgrave Place, with Heffernan and young were the charms of office or the delights Mr. Westmacott not far off. The shoal of Windsor, that while he continued min- amused Chantrey, and he would latterly ister he never found time to sit. He at let a commission go by him to aid the more last found time; Mr. Weekes modelled, deserving of those about him. A better 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

carver than Theakstone never lifted tools: he excelled in draperies, Mr. Heffernan excelled in carving busts.

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

a Scotch cousin to lay any thing like a But this is not all. His tomb once made, claim from kindred to their money, one he provided by will for its preservation. would not unfrequently hear rumors afloat The vicar and schoolmaster of Norton have of the way in which Sir Francis was to yearly sums left to them payable only "so leave his property. He made no particu- long as his tomb shall last." He has not lar secret of the matter himself that a very allowed a daisy to grow unseen about his fair proportion of what he had would be grave, and the Norton Dominie has to inleft by will for the encouragement of Eng- struct ten poor boys how to remove the lish sculpture and English painting. Be-moss and nettles from around his tomb. It yond this he never went publicly, but in private it was different, for he led one (his friend and assistant, as he called him) to believe that he who had helped so much to make his fortune should for certain share in

it. So, at least, the friends of Allan Cun. ningham assert, and they add, that Allan himself, buoyed up in this belief, remained in the service of Sir Francis Chantrey on a very inadequate stipend. He was to receive after benefits in the shape of a handsome legacy!! Like old Volpone,

"I have no parent, child, ally, To give my substance to, but whom I make Must be my heir."

Chantrey died, the legacy was made public, it was £2000, small enough, indeed, from a man who had made so many promises, if, indeed, he did make them, and had so much to leave, and to a man who had been the means of procuring him commissions to ten times that amount, and who had been so long his faithful foreman and assistant. But the inadequacy of the reward was not all; the stipulations under which it was left were cruel in the extreme, for Chantrey, when he made his will (only the year before he died), was well aware of the painful fact that Allan Cunningham's life was just as precarious as his own. The property was sworn under £90,000.

is to be hoped that they may not go out in the night and realize the poetic description of Blair :

trees,

"Oft in the lone churchyard at night I've seen,
By glimpse of moonshine chequering through the
The schoolboy, with his satchel in his hand,
Whistling aloud to bear his courage up,
(With nettles skirted and with moss o'ergrown),
And lightly tripping o'er the long flat stones
That tell in homely phrase who lie below.
Sudden he starts, and hears, or thinks he hears,
The sound of something purring at his heels;
Full fast he flies, and dares not look behind him,
Till out of breath he overtakes his fellows,
Who gather round, and wonder at the tale
Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly,
That walks at dead of night, or takes his stand
Evanishes at crowing of the cock!"
O'er some new-opened grave, and, strange to tell,

Who would not prefer to lie as Allan Cunningham lies at Kensal Green, not in a brick vault, but in his mother earth, or as Wilkie lies amid the blue-green waves of the Atlantic?

Connected with the tomb of Chantrey, there is a story current characteristic of Sir F. Chantrey and his friend Allan Cunningham. Chantrey, after submitting the drawings of his tomb to Cunningham, said, by way of parenthesis, and with a very serious face," But there will be no room for you!" "Room for me!" said Allan Cunningham; "I have no ambition to lie like. The tomb of Sir Francis Chantrey (in the a toad in a stone for some future geologist churchyard of Norton, in Derbyshire, his to discover, or in a place strong enough to native place,) is of a most simple and sin-excite the ambition of another. No, no! gular construction. It is of wrought gran- let me lie where the green grass and the ite, a complete tank in form, with the side daisies grow waving under the winds of slabs sunk into the bottom block and ce- the blue heaven." Chantrey put his drawmented so as to answer all the purposes of ing in his portfolio, snuffed, and said noone large block. An enormous square of thing. The tomb of Alexander the Great granite covers and crowns the whole; and is now the curiosity of a museum. in this huge granite box, of his own construction, and three times encased in wood and lead, lie the remains of Francis Chantrey. He had a horror of the knife, or he There is one very extraordinary part of would certainly have been embalmed. What Chantrey's will which calls for commenta thirst for worldly existence does this ex- viz., that wherein he allows his three exechibit, what a dread of corruption or re-utors, or the survivors or survivor of them, moval:or the executors and administrators of such survivor, to destroy such of his drawings,

"The grave, dread thing!

"Mizraim cures wounds," says Sir Thomas Browne, "and Pharaoh is sold for balsams."

Men shiver when thou'rt named; Nature appall'd, models, and casts, as they or he may in their or his uncontrolled judgment consider

Shakes off her wonted firmness."

not worthy of being preserved. Now it is his foreman; no man of genius ever had true that one of his executors is an artist, such a servant to assist him. The pres but who are the other two? Why one is ence of Allan Cunningham gave an addia stock-broker in the city, and the other a tional character and importance to the plain, unpretending, country gentleman. place. Among the thousands who saw Mr. Jones may select with skill or destroy through the studio of Sir Francis, few ever with taste, but what can one whose whole went away without having seen, as they time has been spent in agricultural pursuits said, Allan Cunningham; many were enliknow of works of art ? or is that man a suf-vened by his entertaining way of illusficient judge of sculpture (to presume to trating by anecdote and remark the dry destroy) whose nights and days have been catalogue of busts and statues before them, past in the study of interest, simple and more courted his acquaintance, and many, compound, the rise and fall of stocks, fresh very many acquired his friendship. securities, the three per cents and the three and a-halfs? The executors have destroyed, we understand, very largely; with what taste and prudence we shall see before long, when Lady Chantrey's present of her husband's casts reaches the Randolph Museum at Oxford.

Allan Cunningham did not present a stronger contrast to his friend Sir Francis in personal appearance than he did in every thing else. One was a great sculptor without the least atom of poetry in his composition; one a great reader, the other one who never read. Chantrey cheerful, and a bon-vivant; Allan Cunningham cheerful and abstemious, yet a most excellent tablecompanion. Both self-taught, both arrived, though in different ways, to great distinction in their respective lines of life. But Chantrey never felt the want of education, Allan Cunningham always did; Chantrey had no respect for antiquity, Allan Cunningham the highest; Chantrey would import no excellencies, Allan Cunningham could never borrow enough; one realized a large fortune in his art, the other an honest and honorable sufficiency. Their last illnesses were much of the same nature; but Cunningham's was brought on from an over-worked, an over-anxious mind; Chantrey's from an inactive, and we are constrained to add, a somewhat pampered body.

We are far from strangers to the many ways in which Allan Cunningham substantially assisted Sir Francis Chantrey. He wrote his letters, digested and buckramed up his evidence upon points wherein his judgment was required, fought his battles in print and before committees, sought out new commissions, assisting and controlling his taste, suggesting new positions for figures, new proportions for his pedestals, and new turns for the folds of his draperies. He kept his accounts and his workmen in order, hushed up quarrels in their infancy, and maintained a harmony throughout the place. Chantrey was indeed fortunate in

The following written evidence, sent in by Chantrey to the House of Commons committee on the Nelson column, preserves in many places the very words and language of Allan Cunningham:

"I cannot believe that a column, or other ornamental object, placed where this is intended to be, can injure the present appearance of the National Gallery, except so far as it may interrupt the view, and perhaps tend to lower its ap parent altitude. As an ornamental object, the beauty and just proportions of a Corinthian column, as forming part of a building, are matters settled about two thousand years ago; what its effect may be, standing alone, must depend much on the base and the object which crowns the summit. An injudicious association of modern things with ancient may put the column out of the pale of classic beauty. Of the statue which is to be made I can give no opinion; but, if it be only to measure seventeen feet, its bird-like size will not be much in the way; and, if formed of Portland stone, will not be long in the way. expect that when the column and the National Gallery are seen together in their whole extent, and at the same moment, which will be the case when viewed between Whitehall and Charing Cross, that the Gallery, as I have said before, may suffer somewhat in its apparent height; but I do not regard this as of much importance when I consider that Mr. Barry's plan of sinking the base line ten or twelve feet must improve the elevation of the National Gallery considerably. I consider this position to be the most favorable that can be found or imagined for any national work of art; its aspect is nearly south, and sufficiently open on all sides to give the object placed on that identical spot all the advantage from light and shade that can be desired; to this may be added the advantage of a happy combination of unobtrusive buildings around; but to conceive a national monument worthy of this magnificent site is no easy task.”

The part printed in italics conveys, as we know of our own knowledge, the very ideas and language of Allan Cunningham; yet it went the round of the papers, and was referred to among artists, as one of the happy sayings to the point of Sir Francis Chantrey. This was written and not oral evidence.

There is much good sense in what fol- | Your idea of water spouting from holes and lows, the pith of a private letter concoct- crevices in the rock-work is pleasing enough; ed by Chantrey and Cunningham to Sir but then rock-work is not fit for a pedestal, and Howard Douglas :I warn you against adopting the vulgar and disgusting notion of making animal's spew wa"I have fully considered the questions which ter or the more natural one of the little fountain you put to me on the erection of a bronze statue at Brussels and Carrara. Avoid all these beastof Sir Frederick Adam at Corfu, on the propri-ly things, whether natural or unnatural, and ety of attempting to make a pedestal in imita- adopt the more classic and pleasing notion of tion of natural rock, a fountain, &c., and you the ancient river-god with his overflowing urn, are heartily welcome to the following remarks, the best emblem of abundance. In my drawing which shortly embrace the result of my own ex-I have indicated four boys, each pouring water perience. out of a vessel; if you want more splash, you may lay some rock-work in the basin, and thus afford hiding-places for the gold and silver fish. 66 Very truly yours, F. CHANTREY."

"I inclose you the outline of a pedestal, suited to the excellent situation chosen and proportioned to the architectural background; but I must tell you that it is also proportioned to a statue twelve feet high, fearing that a figure only nine feet high will disappoint your expectations. I make this suggestion without reference to your means, of which you say nothing; therefore, if you are obliged to limit the figure to nine feet, the pedestal must be reduced in the same proportion, or nearly so.

"I am not surprised that the idea of a rockwork pedestal should have been suggested to you; but I have already seen enough of this sort of work in Rome, and elsewhere, to satisfy me. Perhaps you have seen the pedestal of George III. in Windsor Great Park, which pleases nobody; yet it was the joint production of two great men, Sir Jeffrey Wyatville and Mr. Westmacott. It is formed of huge blocks of rough granite, and cost near eight thousand pounds!! It has also the advantage of standing on a natural mound, with wood for its background, two miles from the castle, with no building whatever in connexion; yet with these advantages it is a decided failure, nor is it likely to be repeated in this country by men of

sense.

"I entirely approve of the idea of a truncated column for the pedestal of a statue in Corfu. It is classical, and I advise its adoption, bearing, of course, such proportions to the figures as are shown in my drawing, which are conformable with the best rules of proportion I have been able to discover; for taste in such matters is very arbitrary.

"The very best material in the world for such a pedestal (next to granite) is the hardest Greek marble (some blocks are very soft). It is proved that it will last two thousand years and more in the climate of Greece, if it escape violence.

Sept. 2, 1835.

In the following letter to Sir Robert Peel, Chantrey pretends to tell the true history of his inimitable bust of Sir Walter Scott:

"Belgrave Place, Jan. 26, 1838. "Dear Sir Robert,-I have much pleasure in complying with your request to note down such facts as remain on my memory concerning the bust of Sir Walter Scott, which you have done me the honor to place in your collection at Drayton Manor.

"My admiration of Scott, as a poet and a man, induced me in the year 1820 to ask him to sit to me for his bust,-the only time I ever recollect having asked a similar favor from any one. He agreed; and I stipulated that he should breakfast with me always before his sittings, and never come alone, nor bring more than three friends at once, and that they should all be good talkers. That he fulfilled the latter condition you may guess, when I tell you that, on one occasion, he came with Mr. Croker, Mr. Heber, and the late Lord Lyttleton. The marble bust produced from these sittings was moulded, and about forty-five casts were disposed of among the poet's most ardent admirers. This was all I had to do with the plaster casts. The bust was pirated by Italians; and England and Scotland, and even her colonies, were supplied with unpermitted and bad casts to the extent of thousands, in spite of the terror of an act of parliament.

"I made a copy in marble from this bust for the Duke of Wellington; it was sent to Apsley House in 1827, and it is the only duplicate of "You say 'the fountain is to play occasion-my bust of Sir Walter that I ever executed in ally;' from this I conclude that you have not a marble. superabundance of water. I have therefore reduced the basin to a circle of forty feet, being in better proportion to the pedestal; and a circle will be better worked, and cost less than an oval. The outer rim of this basin should show about fifteen inches above the ground line. Iron rails are paltry, and totally inadmissible. I also suggest that two feet deep of water will be amply sufficient for your gold and silver fish, yet not deep enough to drown a child.

"I am not aware of any subject on which art has been employed that has given rise to so much costly nonsense and bad taste as fountains.

"I now come to your bust of Scott. In the year 1828 I proposed to the poet to present the original marble as an heir-loom to Abbotsford, on condition that he would allow me sittings sufficient to finish another marble from the life for my own studio. To this proposal he acceded; and the bust was sent to Abbotsford accordingly, with the following words inscribed on the back: This bust of Sir Walter Scott was made in 1820 by Francis Chantrey, and presented by the sculptor to the poet, as a token of esteem, in 1828.'

"In the months of May and June in the same