phi, Mars, Venus, and Narcissus, all originals, all the size of life, and all presented by him, show how deeply he felt his obligations to the Society. Again, in 1761, Nollekens received ten guineas for the altorelievo of 'Jephthah's Vow,' which now hangs up in the antechamber to the great room of the Society; and two years later, fifty guineas, as a mark of its approbation of a still more important piece of sculpture. The example of these sculptors was followed soon after by Flaxman, who, sending in 1768 one of his earliest attempts, received a grant of ten guineas; for another work, exhibited in 1771, he obtained the Society's gold medal. Next came Lawrence, who at the early age of thirteen, received the reward of a silver palette, gilt, with the addition of five guineas in money, for his drawing in crayons of the Transfiguration; the painter, in the height of his subsequent prosperity, was accustomed to speak of the impulse thus given to his love of the art. Other names might be added to the list, which could also be extended with interest to painters of the present day; as, for instance, Sir William Ross received the Society's silver palette in 1807, at the age of twelve, for a drawing of the death of Wat Tyler; Mr. Edwin Landseer received a similar mark of approbation in 1810, for an etching; and Mr. Wyon was adjudged the gold medal in 1818, for a medal die. But to artists there is a feature of still greater interest in the Society's history; it was in its rooms that the first public exhibition of paintings in England took place in 1760, and which was continued with great success for some years. If we turn to manufactures and commerce, and the variety of incidentals included in those terms, we find even more important and solid services rendered, as a whole, though the details furnish fewer points of interest or comment. The large expenditure, of the Society in the reward of merit, which expenditure for about ninety years, has considerably exceeded £100,000, is alone a striking fact, connected as it has been with so little personal interest on the part of the distributors, whose labours have been throughout labours of love. In glancing over the subjects that have engaged their attention with the happiest results, we may mention the following. To the growth of forest trees the Society gave a great impulse among the higher classes, almost immediately after its formation, and accordingly we find among the recipients of its gold and silver medals, the Dukes of Bedford and Beaufort, the Earls of Winterton, Upper Ossory, and Mansfield, and a Bishop of Landaff. A similar movement took place, and through the same agency, in agriculture, with the effect of bringing to bear on that most important of all sciences, and almost for the first time, a considerable amount of intellect and education, and of enterprising activity, which formed most refreshing contrasts to the dulness, ignorance, and unwillingness to move one inch out of the even tenor of their way, that too generally characterised the farmers of England at the time. Mr. Curwen, of Windermere,

the Society he should never have been a farmer; and his case was no doubt but one of a large number. Implements began rapidly to improve; madder, hemp, foreign grasses, and different sorts of cattle, were added to our home productions; experiments on drill husbandry were brought into notice; and thus did the Society lead the way to that assiduous study of all the processes of agriculture-however apparently well known-that promises yet to revolutionize the entire science. Then in chemistry, we had for the first time manufactured at home such vessels as the best kinds of crucibles, melting-pots for tin ores, and earthen retorts, such materials as smalt and verdigris; whilst the prosperity of the country was even more directly advanced by the introduction of new or improved modes of tinning copper and brass vessels, dyeing woollen cloth, linen, cotton, silk, and leather, making buff leather, transparent varnishes and enamels, tanning with oak saw-dust, &c., &c. In manufactures and mechanics generally, the Society taught us, or at least aided those who did so, the manufacture of Turkey carpets, tapestry weaving, weaving to imitate the Marseille and India quilting; also how to improve our spinning and lace-making, our paper and our catgut for musical instruments, our straw bonnets, and artificial flowers. The colonies shared in its extensive beneficence: potash and pearlush were produced by the Society's agency in North America; and just before the war of independence which separated the States from England broke out, it was busily engaged in introducing the cultivation of the vine, the growth of silkworms, and the manufacture of indigo and vegetable oils. But the rewards, some twenty in number, given within the last thirty or forty years, to poor Bethnal-green and Spitalfields weavers, for useful inventions in their calling, illustrates perhaps even better than any of the foregoing notices that feature of the Society which so honourably distinguishes it from all others in the present day, its readiness to receive, examine, and reward every kind of useful invention that may be brought forward by those who have neither friends nor money to aid them in making their inventions known. To all such persons the Adelphi is ever open; and the general knowledge of this fact throughout Britain might yet be attended with more important results than any noted in the Society's previous history. So careful has the latter been to do full justice to whatever might be offered it by parties thus situated, that, till recently, patented inventions were not included within its scope; and now that an alteration has taken place, and that the Society very properly is ready to do its best to disseminate information as to all useful discoveries, whether patents or not, it still reserves its rewards for those who are too poor to take out a patent, or too liberal.

The Society awards special prizes for the best designs, exhibiting a union of good art and manufacture, and also for the best compositions, whether painted or modelled, to be employed in architectural decorations, &c. Other prizes (being strictly educational) are awarded to students of a certain age; the Society's aim being to form a class of students who shall be prepared to enter into successful competition for the prizes previously mentioned. The Society has also resolved that a class of rewards shall be established and offered to those manufacturers who produce original and beautiful works. There are thus several distinct classes of prizes to promote decorative art:-Class 1. For Students. Class 2. Medals and money-rewards for matured artists producing decorative designs worthy of the Society's sanction. Class 3. Medals and honorary rewards to artisans and workmen. Class 4. Medals and honorary testimonials to manufacturers producing beautiful works. In order to prepare the way for the establishment of a National Periodical Exhibition of British Art and Manufactures, the Society commenced in 1847 an exhibition of manufactures illustrating the application of decorative design, which was visited by nearly twenty thousand persons. The exhibition of 1848 was visited by more than seventy thousand persons of all ranks.

In addition to these objects, the Society awards prizes for discoveries and communications relative to the products of the Colonies. Indeed, looking at the variety of subjects, and then stepping into the modelroom of the Society at the Adelphi (Cut, No. 6), one might be tempted to ask whether there are any limits to its field of exertion; whether, in short, it is not a society for the encouragement of everything. What a glorious confusion there is amidst all this orderly array of glasscases, that extend horizontally in rows across the room, or that perpendicularly line the walls. Hands for the one-handed, to give them again two, and other instruments for those who have lost both-clothes of all sorts of materials from all sorts of countriesmedals of Charles I.'s reign, and the last new stove of

box, to mount up to roofs-bee-hives, and instruments to slice turnips-ploughs, and instruments to restrain vicious bulls-pans to preserve butter in hot localities, and safety-lamps to preserve men in dangerous ones— models of massive cranes, and of little tips for umbrellas-life-buoys, and maroon-locks to give notice of thieves in gardens-diving-bells and expanding-keyssafe coaches and traps-clocks, and improved tailpieces for violoncellos-instruments to draw spirits, and instruments to draw teeth-samples of tea, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmegs, in different stages of growthmodels of Tuscan pavements-beds for invalids— methods to teach the blind how to write-but the list is interminable, and were we to continue it for half-adozen pages further, we should be in no appreciable degree nearer the end. It is but justice to another admirable point in the Society's policy to mention here, that however miscellaneous many of the subjects may be which are brought annually before it, in accordance with the particular pursuit or skill of individuals, the Society itself, at the same time, pursues a methodical course of its own: thus while it rewards by "bounties" whatever inventions or works of more than ordinary skill and value are casually submitted to it, its chief rewards, or "premiums," are bestowed on those who have succeeded in a competition, or in a mode, the nature of which has been previously pointed out by the Society. Its guide in selecting subjects for premiums may be, perhaps, best expressed in the phrase, 'What do we most want?' a question that we may presume to find practically answered in the lists now before us, of subjects for which rewards will be given in the course of 1850, and which include a host of matters of the deepest interest, in connection with the national prosperity. We find among them premiums offered for calico-prints (with a design founded on the sweet-pea), mousselaines-de-laine (with a design founded on the lilac), cashmeres, muslins, furniture-chintzes, figured silks, ribbons, shawls, carpets, laces, linen cloths, and wicker baskets. Then among the drawings proposed for the youthful students' class are such subjects as twelve British wild plants in their natural growth; ornamental arrangements of the honeysuckle and passion-flowers; and the human skeleton. The designers' class includes prizes for a cartoon formed from the rose, shamrock, and thistle, and for a design for a fire-screen for a drawing-room, which may serve as an occasional table for small objects, such as teacups or a lady's work-box, and also for a reading-desk or music-stand. We find in the subjects of the artisans' class, specimens of wood-carving. The object of this prize is to encourage wood-carving as a home occupation, subsidiary to other occupations, and the prizes are therefore all restricted to amateurs. The section of agriculture deals with the extremely im portant subject of London sewerage by offering a gold medal for the best plan. We fear there are no poets in the Society's committee, or they never could have

clearing meadows and pasture-land from the places called fairy-rings, and also from buttercups, blue-bells, dandelions, and other noxious weeds. The other sections, those of chemistry, mechanics, and colonies and trade, are all very interesting. We can only mention the prizes offered for a new substance to receive the Calotype or Talbotype image; a new ink that shall never fade through age; a new substitute for the potato: for the best British colonial tea, flax, silk, and oil; for the finest wines from Australia; and the most ornamental new woods for furniture from anywhere.

We have by no means exhausted the evidences of the renewed regions of the Society's operations. They have, of late years, established an exhibition of the works of our most eminent living painters. Thus the exhibition one year was devoted to Mulready, and the next to Etty. At the present time it is exhibiting an extremely choice collection of examples of medieval art in furniture, and articles of taste and vertu. Lastly, it is taking an important position with reference to the Industrial Exhibition of 1851, which it is but reasonable to expect, will exceed beyond all comparison everything of the kind ever known in the past history of the world. Nearly every great civilized community is preparing to send us its contribution. We only fear it may be lessened in effect by its own magnitude, through the difficulty of realising in the mind any clear idea of a whole which is to consist of such multitudinous parts.

We now turn to an event in the history of the Society which has already done much to popularise it in years past, which may yet do much more, when the magnificent works which that event placed in their possession shall be as generally known and appreciated as they deserve.

Some sixty-five years ago, there might have been seen daily passing in a direction between Oxford-street and the Adelphi, for years together, and through all kinds of weather, one whose appearance told to ever the most casual observer that he looked upon a remarkable man. Referring to himself, in one of his letters to a friend, he had once said, "though the body and the soul of a picture will discover themselves on the slightest glance, yet you know it could not be the same with such a pock-fretted hard-featured little fellow as I am also;" but neither these personal characteristics, nor the mean garb in which he usually appeared, could conceal the earnestness stamped upon his grave saturnine countenance, or the air of entire absorption in some mental pursuit, having little in common with the bustle of the every-day business of the world around him. He was a man to make or to keep few friends, and to shun all acquaintances; it was not often therefore that, in these passages to and fro, he had any companion; but the event was noticeable when he had, from the striking change in his demeanour. He became full of animation, and of a kind of sparkling cheerfulness; his conversation was at once frank, weighty, and elevating, and even the oaths, with which

the most fastidious censor of words, whilst borne along on the full and free current of the painter's thoughts. No one but himself at such times would have called his countenance "hard-featured;" its smile was inexpressibly sweet, its look of scorn or anger, when roused, such as few men could have met unmoved. But what was the employment that thus determined for so long a period his daily movements? The answer will require a brief review of his past career. He was an Irishman, and his first important work was exhibited at Dublin, when he was only a very young man. It was a picture alike noticeable for the novelty of the conception and the excellence with which it had been developed. The subject was a tradition of the Irish church, running something to the following effect:-St. Patrick, it appears, by one of his discourses succeeded in converting the barbarian King of Cashel, who demanded immediate baptism. Hastening with pious zeal to perform the act, St. Patrick struck his iron-shod crozier into the ground, and in so doing unwittingly struck it through the king's foot. So rapt, however, was the king in his new faith, that, believing it to be a part of the ceremony, he bore the torture without the slightest manifestation of uneasiness, and was thus baptized. No sooner was the picture looked on than it was admired. "Who was the painter?" asked every one. Then, a countryman, young, friendless, and not too well clad, came forward with feelings of the deepest emotion to declare himself, when, to his astonishment, no one would believe him, and he hurried out of the room to conceal the sudden revulsion of his feelings. But Burke was there-the man who seems never to have beheld genius in any shape struggling without taking it at once to his heart, his purse, his home-Burke, who saved Crabbe from the depths of a despair that we shudder to contemplate, now followed the young artist, commended his work, advised with him as to his future studies, and ultimately sent him to Rome, paying the entire expenses of the expedition. From that time his rise was rapid, though no doubt partially checked by the infirmity of temper to which through life he was a victim.

At Rome, Barry-for it was he to whom we referhad been often annoyed by the absurd taunts of foreigners as to the ungenial character of the British soil for the growth of art,-often seduced into answering them in such a manner as suited rather his fiery temper and indomitable will, than the cause which he so im patiently espoused. But a better result was his own quiet determination to devote his life to the disproof of the theory. He began admirably, by a strict analysis of his own powers, and by inquiring how they were best to be developed. Here is the result: "If I should chance to have genius, or anything else," he observes, in a letter to Dr. Sleigh, "it is so much the better; but my hopes are grounded upon an unwearied intense application, of which I am not sparing. At present I have little to show that I value; my work is all under ground, digging and laying foundations,