monument to his memory in connection with it. He purchased a piece of ground at Twickenham, for the purpose of erecting these almshouses twenty years ago, at the time of making his will, designing that this glorious memorial of his genius should be raised amid the beautiful scenery of that locality. The only remarkable circumstance attending the bequest is, that he should exclude water-colour painters from participating in its benefits. His oil pictures, comprising forty to fifty of his finest works, are left to the National Gallery, on condition that, within ten years, a room be set apart exclusively for their reception." That one who for many years lived, and, in a great part, gained his reputation by watercolours, should exclude the professors of that art from any benefit of his will, is curious, and almost to be condemned. He declared that he admired Gritin intensely, yet refrained from purchasing that artist a gravestone.

Turner lived in the honours of the Academy, of which he was a member nearly fifty years; in fact, had he but lived two months longer he would have done so. He was the "Father," or senior member of that body; but Time, which spares none, at length laid hands upon this eccentric genius, who died on the 19th of Dec. of last year, at his lodgings, in Chelsea, whereat he had been living incognito, and known, unless female curiosity had pulled aside the mask, as "Mr. Brooks."

The remains of the great landscape painter were deposited in St. Paul's Cathedral in the month of Dec., 1851, near Sir Joshua Reynolds, and between Barry and Sir Christopher Wren. It was by his own desire that this place was selected, permission being granted by the Dean and Chapter, on the official request of the Royal Academy. Parts of the Service were beautifully chanted by the choir, and Archdeacon Hale, the Canon-Residentiary, presided at the ceremony. The concluding portion of the Service was solemnly and most impressively read in the crypt by the Dean, himself a poet, and one of Turner's warmest admirers. The funeral was attended by all the distinguished Academicians, as well as by numerous friends and amateurs in art. coffin the age of the deceased was marked seventy-nine; the register of his baptism is dated May 14, 1775.

On the

The effect of Turner upon the English school of painters will be less, probably, than a less original painter would have been He was "alone of his own school," like Ben Jonson in position, and could scarcely have disciples, although, perhaps, many imitators may arise. His very eccentricities formed part of his excellence, and none could approach him; yet others may come who will drink inspiration from his paintings, and with a more manageable genius, who may form a school combining the excellences of Turner with the more tangible and comprehensible beauties of Wilson, Lorraine, or Poussin. Yet the deceased artist ranks high, and his fame will increase. In sea-pieces Vandervelde alone equals, but does not surpass him,-nay, in peculiar effects, is decidedly inferior to him. This may be seen in Lord Yarborough's collection, where one of Vandervelde's finest productions is hung as a companion to Turner. A well-known writer on art thus sums up in conclusion:-"He is, beyond question, at the head of our landscape painters,-greater than Wilson, greater than Gainsborough. Contrasted with the great masters of the Continental schools, he will be admitted as worthy to rank with Claude and Poussin, but he is more varied than either; giving, as he does at times, pictures worthy of Cuyp or of Vandervelde,-which Claude or Poussin never attempted to supply."

To his memory, therefore, the memory of one who has enlarged our acquaintance with the beautiful, and has by his representations opened our sympathies with the glorious external forms of the Creator's works,-let us be grateful. Born with but one impulse, the artist obeyed it,-worshipped and wrought well;-carrying out, in his intense devotion to Art, the old Latin adage, “Laborare est orare."

J.H.F.

THE OPENING AND THE CLOSING SCENE IN THE LIVES OF CELEBRATED MEN.

THE contrast which so frequently exists between the external circumstances that surround us at the time of our birth, and those which distinguish the closing scenes of life, affords in the case of illustrious individuals, a curious and not uninstructive chapter in the hist›ry

of humanity. It does not, however, fall within our present province to perform the part of monitor, by deducing the various important lessons which might fairly be drawn from so copious a source; but simply to furnish to our readers some of the significant instances of this kind which are recorded in the biographies of celebrated persons, and which, we hope, will be found both useful and entertaining.

Columbus, the discoverer of the western world, and the son of a poor wool-carder, was born at Genoa early in the fifteenth century, and, having attained celebrity as a navigator and geographist, came to Valladolid, where he was patronised by the Spanish monarch and his courtiers. Here, too, he subsequently expired in the zenith of his fame as a discoverer. No reward had crowned his splendid success. The king was jealous of his renown; and the last days of the great man were embittered by the sense of royal disfavours. When it was too late, Ferdinand endeavoured to make atonement for his injustice by the erection of a monument to the memory of Columbus, inscribed in the Spanish tongue with the words, "For Castile and Leon, Columbus discovered a new world."

Three centuries later, another voyager, Captain James Cook, was born of parents equally lowly, his father and mother both earning their subsistence as servants on a village farm near Whitby, in Yorkshire. Receiving high and merited honours during his lifetime, Cook's summons to the better land came whilst he was still engaged in the labours of discovery near the Sandwich Islands. In this distant region, a collision having occurred between a party of natives and his ship's crew, he was stricken down, and, his body being seized by the natives, nothing but a few charred and broken bones were ever recovered of his remains.

The father of John Bunyan was a tinker; and the humble cottage, with its small garden-plot of crocuses and snowdrops, in which his gifted child first drew breath, is yet shown to visitors; but it was in the heart of London, in its Bunhill-field Cemetery, that the immortal author of the "Pilgrim's Progress" was interred; and a monument since erected to his memory marks the spot.

The vicissitudes of fortune are particularly illustrated in the lives of professional persons, whose eminent talents frequently alone raised them to eminence; and of this truth, Sir Thomas Lawrence, the son of a country innkeeper, is a notable example. Visiting royalty on the footing of a familiar acquaintance, fame and fortune crowning his brilliant and successful artist-career, a knight of the French legion of honour, and a member of six foreign academies, he died amidst the most sunny prosperity, and his mortal frame rests in the national mausoleum of St. Paul's Cathedral, whither it was attended by the Lord Mayor, the sheriffs, and a large body of the members of the Royal Academy. A yet more interesting instance is that of the great painter, Claude, whose poverty-stricken parents were compelled to bind him to a pastry cook, but whose artist-spirit stirring within him spurred him on to leave France for Italy, where he created for himself a reputation that will last as long as those European nations which proudly exhibit SO many hundreds of his paintings. Amiable and illustrious, he breathed his last in the Eternal City, at the venerable age of eightytwo years. The first rural landscape painter of England, as he has been termed, the dissipated George Morland reversed the usual order of advancement, and, though born of parents in good circumstances, expired in sponging-house; whilst Opie, the portrait painter, who passed his earlier years in a carpenter's shop, near Truro, in Cornwall, after winning a high reputation, finally reposed in St. Paul's Ĉathedral. A most beautiful and wonderful songstress of the last century, Mrs. Billington, the daughter of a German hautboy player, was born in London, and after realising a princely fortune by her extraordinary voice-which sometimes brought her as much as £10,000 in the course of twelve months -died on her own fertile estate of Le Ternier, near Venice. Our finest bass singer, Bartleman, first saw the light in a London garret chamber, and began life as a chorister boy in Westminster Abbey, in whose cloisters he was buried, after a long illness of terrible suffering, and where his modest grave may yet be seen, with the inscription of the commencing notes of

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Pergolesi's air, "O Lord have mercy upon me!" The infant quaker of the United States, Benjamin West, who was obliged to rob the cat's tail of hair to make his first brush, was born in Philadelphia, and, winning his way to eminence in Rome and England, died president of the Royal Academy, and was followed to his resting-place, in St. Paul's Cathedral, by a train of nobleman, ambassadors, and artists. A very different ending, at least to the feelings of the party concerned, closed the splendid career of the son of a poor bargeman, early in the sixteenth century, who, too poor to pay for a light by which to study, was obliged to prepare for his classes by the lamps in the street and church porches, and, gradually attaining to successive preferments, finally ascended the Papal throne, under the title of Adrian VI. His own words, which he commanded should be inscribed on his tomb, will best relate the sequel of his greatness: "Here lies Adrian VI., who esteemed no misfortune which happened to him in life so great as his being called to govern." The well-known lines of Gray, concerning the Miltons and Hampdens, whose talents he thinks remain buried in their native villages, in the absence of exciting circumstances to call them out, would seem to be almost disproved by the numberless examples of villagers who, unassisted by patronage or interest in taking "le premier, pas qui conte," have yet attained to the highest honours. Our celebrated countryman, Sir Isaac Newton, a weakly posthumous child, was born in a Lincolnshire hamlet, on a small ancestral farm, and, commencing his education at the parish school, made himself a world-wide reputation and knighted Queen Anne. Rich in friends and fortune, he was, at last, interred with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. Molière, the son of an humble Parisian tradesman, could neither read nor write at the age of fourteen, yet he was destined to change the whole character of the French drama, by producing a series of immortal works. He was attacked by his last illness when performing the part of Le Malade Imaginaire; and died so deeply regretted, that Louis the Fourteenth, although the comedian had been excommunicated, and was regarded with abhor

rence by the clergy, whom he had so severely satirised, prevailed on the Archbishop to allow his much-prized remains to be buried in consecrated ground. Of musical notoriety is the instance of Joseph Haydn, whose father was an humble wheelright, and who first drew breath in an Austrian village; when he had attained the age of three-score-and-ten, he witnessed the performance of his own beautiful oratorio of "The Creation," at Vienna, attended by the Princess Esterhazy. His entrance was welcomed by the rising up of all the most illustrious personages in the land, the triumphant flourishes of the orchestra, and the loud reiterated applauses of the whole august assembly. War was then raging between France and Austria, and the aged composer was terribly alarmed by the firing of Napoleon's cannons, at the very gates of Vienna; and one day, having sung the National Anthem, "God Save the Emperor," three times with great enthusiasm, but trembling accents, he immediately fell into the stupor which preceded his death. Mozart's requiem was performed in his honour, and he was laid in the same distinguished sepulchre which contained the bones of that master composer.

On the steps of the church of St. Jean Le Rond, in Paris, in the last century, a policeman picked up the body of a little foundling, left there to perish. A kind glazier's wife took charge of the infant, who afterwards became, under the name of D'Alembert, one of the most eminent mathematicians of France. He died the peaceful death of a great and amiable savant, at an advanced age. Coedmon, our earliest English poet, and who sang of the Creation so finely, that some commentators suppose Milton himself did not disdain to imitate him, was originally a cow-boy, and died in the receipt of royal patronage, the revered member of a religious establishment, and leaving his name recorded lastingly in the annals of his country's literature. But to enumerate more of the long list of those who have raised themselves to eminence from lowly stations, might become monotonous; so, passing by Arkwright, Brindley, Burns, Telford, La Place, Franklin, Canova, and a host of others, who, born in hovels, finally repose in

stately tombs, we will notice another class, who, having commenced their career in prosperity, closed it amidst the bitterest reverses of fortune. Of these Sir Thomas More is a notable example. His father was a judge on the King's Bench, whose promising boy, born in London, and surrounded by every advantageous circumstance, which could be bestowed by birth, fortune, and education, won the regard of his king, the love of his country, and the veneration of foreign nations, only to close his life on the scaffold, condemned to death by his most ungrateful monarch, for his conscientious adherence to principle. Every one will remember the deplorable termination of life which awaited that early favorite of fortune, the most lovely and unfortunate Mary Stuart, as well as the untimely end of France's wisest King, Henry IV., who was assassinated in his carriage when in the fifty-seventh year of his age. Sir Walter Raleigh, also, the son of a Devonshire farmer, distinguished himself in a prosperous and most romantic career, until he was forced to languish twelve years of his existence in prison; and, after being unjustly condemned to death, was sent out of the country to command a warlike expedition of importance, for which services he not only received no remuneration; but on his return, fifteen years after the sentence of condemnation had been pronounced, he was, "out of compliment to Spain," beheaded in the Tower of London. Little, too, could the humble Pisan mechanic of the 16th century, who perceiving that one of his boys possessed uncommon abilities, strained his own narrow means to send him to the University, foresee that the young Galileo would become one of the world's most celebrated scientific men, and then conclude his famous life blind, deaf, and crippled, under the application of torture in the dungeons of the Inquisition. Born of an ancient family in Nottinghamshire, the fate of the celebrated Archbishop Thomas Cranmer is always interesting, from the character of mingled sweetness, power, and weakness, which strongly enlisting our sympathies, first raised him to the highest station in the Church, and afterwards betrayed him into a false profession of his religious sentiments; expiated in some measure by

the subsequent nobleness of his recantation, and the heroism with which he met a martyr's fate, and expired amidst the flames at Oxford. Cradled in regal pomp, Charles V., at sixteen years of age, succeeded to the kingdoms of Arragon and Castile, then became King of the Romans, and Emperor of Germany, and forty years later gave up the government to his son Philip, and, retiring to a monastery, died, after two years' practice of most un-kingly austerities, in a state of the deepest melancholy, which appears only the fitting retribution for one who had mowed down his subjects by hundreds of thousands in the diabolical game of war. It would be matter of whimsical speculation could we trace the history of all the great men who were bred in a carpenter's shop. Certainly a very large number have sprung from parents engaged in this humble profession, which must ever be a source of sacred interest to all who profess the faith of the carpenter's son. One notable example is that of Hildebrand, the talented son of a carpenter in Tuscany, who was born early in the 11th century. This clever, energetic boy became an inmate of the monastery of Cluny, near Maçon, in France, and in the retirement of its shady gardens, formed, even in boyhood, those vast plans of Church reformation which, amidst the most arduous difficulties, were afterwards carried out when the young monk became Pope Gregory VII. He sustained many deep discouragements, mingled with brilliant triumphs over his enemies and the Church's guilty errors. But, though feeling on his dying bed that he had sown good seed, whose fruit would appear hereafter, yet, when thus surrounded by his sorrowing bishops, who knew that they should soon see his face no more, he could not help murmuring, "I have loved justice and hated evil, therefore I die in exile." An aged bishop bent over him, and tried to comfort him by replying, "Not so, holy father; you cannot die in exile, for God has given you all nations for a heritage, and the ends of the earth for a dominion;" and while these words were speaking, the carpenter's son expired. His inveterate enemy, Henry IV. of Germany, soon afterwards ended his royal life on a door-step, where he died of cold and hunger,-thus adding

another name to the long list of regal persons whose lives have ended tragically. What a peaceful contrast is presented by the closing scene of the sweetgifted poet Petrarch, whose paternal inheritance, though small indeed, did not prevent his leaving a rich legacy of mental fruits to his country. When seventy-two years of age, wasted as he was by repeated fevers, he still struggled on to acquire knowledge, and to give expression to his own vivid conceptions; and, one July morning, was found dead in his study, seated in his favourite arm-chair, and his head resting on the open pages of a book. Our own peculiarly national poet, Cowper, born of aristocratic parentage, and who spent many of his best days in writing for the cottage homes of England, expired in that clouded state of intellect which seems to us so mysterious, and which at the same time proves immortality so clearly, by showing us how independent are the spirit and its perishable earthly tenement of each other.

It would afford us an instructive chapter in the annals of dying moments, were we able to depict the previous inner life (now imperfectly known) of the many sensitive beings who have gone to their last homes, either without waiting their summons from Him who endowed them with existence, or those who died unconscious of the great change which awaited them, or were hurried to another world by the injustice of their fellow-men, from the eccentric, clever author of the "Tale of a Tub," down to our pure-hearted, single-minded statesman Sir Samuel Romilly. Such a resumé would be full of deep and melancholy interest, but would occupy too much space to be here entered upon, comprising, as it must do, “the noble army of the martyrs,"-the victims of secret imprisonment in Spelberg, the Bastile, and other fearful dungeons; and the painful instances of gifted individuals who, like Keats, Chatterton, Toussaint L'Ouverture, and many others, who died under the effects of the less open, but not the less certain, oppression of their fellowcreatures. A few more examples of those great men who have left their broad signature indelibly inscribed on the roll of time, and we must bring these desultory remarks to a conclusion.

Let us look at the two most popular poets in our own country twenty years since one, of high birth, pursued a brief meteoric career, dazzling in its occasional brilliancy, but obscured by sin and the fearful display of noble powers misused for evil, and his fitful light expired in a transient gleam of splendour, when devoting his young but already wasted energies in the cause of Grecian freedom at Missilonghi; the other mighty minstrel of the north, also lame, though of far less aristocratic descent, passed an almost blameless life of untiring industry, and, after blessing our country with an inexhaustible treasury of high-hearted, invigorating romance, died a greyheaded man in the noble abode which he had himself erected on the banks of the Yarrow; and for long ages to come, will pilgrims continue to visit the two famous shrines of Newstead and Abbotsford. Schoolboys, whose imaginations are inflamed by the romantic incidents with which the lives of the ancient Greeks and Romans are filled, will wonder that we can pass over so rich a store of suitable illustrations to our subject; but they would require a chapter to themselves, though it is with reluctance we omit all notice of Plutarch's heroes. The very name of this well-known biographer recalls a host of bloody exploits; of Pompey's death-he, beloved by the Romans in his youth, and who embracing his wife, well aware that his end drew near, repeated these lines from Sophocles—

Whoever to a tyrant bends his way, Is made a slave, e'en if he goes his freeman. And then stepping into a smaller boat, in order to land on the Egyptian coast, he was murdered by the conspirators, and his ashes were interred in his Alban villa. Then, who does not remember the assassination of Caius Cæsar, by Brutus and others, within the walls of the Senate, and the expiatory decree, after the deed was done, that he should be honoured as a god? And what young student does not dwell with delight on the history of the stern, upright Cato, who, when he had resolved on self-murder, went to bed, and after reading Plato's beautiful dialogue on the soul, calmly put an end to his existence, but a few years before the advent of Him who

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