'scorny. On the day of her marriage she was attired in brocaded silk, with a stomacher set in diamonds, an elegant point-lace apron, her hair raised high upon a cushion, silken shoes with spangles and narrow heels three inches high, with a bouquet of rose-buds in her bosom; her marriage wardrobe cost two hundred pounds (about one thousand dollars). Joseph wore a suit of purple, silk stockings in blue and white stripes, his hair dressed in curls high in front, and the identical lace ruffles which he had smuggled from Rome."

The marriage proved on the whole an amicable one; there was a similarity in their views important to the harmony of their lives. They both condemned all unnecessary expense. If she was not more habitually frugal than Nollekens, she does not seem to have had any impulses of generosity, of which some are recorded of her husband.

The character of the artist stands forth in all its peculiarities. Ordinary in his appearance, unpolished in his conversation and manners, he seems, nevertheless, to have been invited to the tables of the aristocratic. The love of busts was generally diffused; Nollekens also excelled in individual portraits, and many a great man was willing to be exhibited under the different phases of private life, to

give him the better opportunity of obtaining a good likeness. He made the busts of Fox and Pitt; but neither of them is considered among his successful efforts. Those more remarkable are of the Prince of Wales, Dr. Burney, the Marquis of Stafford, and the Duke of Bedford.

In his seventy-third year the artist continued to model with all the success of early life. His wife, though younger, began to fail, and was obliged to modify her rigid system of economy; but the fortune of the frugal pair was daily accumulating, and long after he relinquished modelling groups, his sitters for busts were numerous. Mrs. Nollekens died in 1817, in the seventy-fourth year of her age. Nollekens lived to be eighty-six, and died in 1823.

JOHN BACON was born in 1740, and, after escaping one or two dangerous accidents in his boyhood, lived to be an eminent sculptor. In points of individual character he seems to have been the reverse of Nollekens. His manners were refined, and he generally pleased all who associated with him. He was never incensed at any criticisms on his works, but listened to them with earnest simplicity.

Bacon was twenty-eight years old when the

Royal Academy was instituted. He had previously received premiums from the Society of Arts, for models in clay. His early years were spent in a pottery. He now entered the Royal Academy as a student. Cunningham "he here first saw an artist of name says, and fame exhibit the whole art and mystery of conferring on a rude lump of clay the image he had conceived in his mind." We may easily imagine what a development this must have been to him.

He received from Reynolds the gold medal for sculpture, though Banks and Nollekens were his competitors. The subject was Eneas bearing Anchises from the siege of Troy. His statue of Mars and Venus, in clay, he presented to the Society of Arts.

After the death of the Earl of Chatham, designs from sculptors were requested for a monument to his memory. The king was much pleased with that of Bacon, and it was adopted. As every one who visits Westminster Abbey may see it, it is useless to attempt a description.

He was a man of much serious feeling, and enjoyed great happiness from his domestic union. But in 1783 he had the misfortune to lose his wife. About one year after her death he married again, and gave to his five helpless children a second mother.

Bacon ranks high as an artist, and as a good man and Christian his character has been unquestioned. Some, who little understood his religion, accused him of fanaticism, others of hypocrisy. He was a disciple of Whitefield, and zealously strove to make men virtuous and good.

He died suddenly, on the evening of Sunday, August 4th, 1799, at the age of fiftyeight, and was buried in Whitefield's Chapel, Tottenham Court Road. At his own desire, a plain tablet was placed over his grave, with this inscription, which he wrote for the purpose before his death:

"What I was as an artist seemed to me of some importance while I lived; but what I really was as a believer in Christ Jesus is the only thing of importance to me now."

He distributed his wealth, sixty thousand pounds, equally among his children.

CHAPTER XXI.

ANNE SEYMOUR CONWAY.

ANNE SEYMOUR CONWAY stands alone in the annals of female sculpture. Excepting the unfortunate Properzia de' Rossi, already mentioned, we have made no record of any one but the regretted daughter of Louis Philippe, whose early death frustrated the efforts of a genius which bade fair to compete with the graceful forms of Canova or Flaxman.

Miss Conway moved in the highest walks of English society. Beautiful and affluent, she had only to be seen to be admired; and after having tasted the enjoyment which springs from fashionable life, after being celebrated in the ball-room and forming a theme for the gay worshippers of fashion, she suddenly disappeared from these haunts, and was seldom seen in public circles.

It could not long be concealed from the world of courtiers, that the beautiful Miss Conway, the only child of Field-Marshal