[275] Surrey Chapel is now occupied by a large machinery firm. Rowland Hill used to say, in allusion to its octagonal form, that he liked a round building because there were no corners for the devil to hide in. Here he won the devotion of his congregation and the esteem of the many distinguished people who came to hear him. Sheridan said: “I go to hear Rowland Hill because his ideas come red-hot from the heart.” Dean Milner said to him, “Mr. Hill! Mr. Hill! I felt to-day ’tis this slap-dash preaching, say what they will, that does all the good.” He died at his house in Blackfriars Road, April 11, 1833, aged 88, and was buried in a vault under his pulpit. [276] This fanatical advocate of Charles the First’s execution (at St. Margaret’s, Westminster) was one of the regicides executed in 1660. [277] Smith is nowhere mentioned by Lamb, and other evidence of their acquaintance is wanting. [278] George Frost (1754-1821) is remembered as the intimate friend of Constable. Smart was John Smart (1740-1811), the miniature painter. He died in London. “His genius lov’d his Country’s native views; Its taper spires, green lawns, or sheltered farms; He touch’d each scene with Nature’s genuine hues, And gave the _Suffolk_ landscape all its charms.” [279] Smith had evidently asked Constable to ascertain for him the exact date of Gainsborough’s birth. This is still uncertain: it took place in Sepulchre Street, Sudbury, at the end of April or beginning of May 1727. He was baptized on 14th May of that year in the Independent meeting-house in Sudbury. [280] James Gubbins was a subscriber to Smith’s _Remarks on Rural Scenery_ (1797), a volume of etchings of cottage and rural scenes around London. One of its drawings represents a squatter’s shanty in Epping Forest, bowered in trees, and is entitled “Lady Plomer’s Palace on the summit of Hawke’s Hill Wood, Epping Forest.” [281] The Minories drawing referred to by Constable was Smith’s etching in his _Antient Topography_ of the north and east walls of the Convent of St. Clare, the remains of which were destroyed by fire on March 23, 1797. Only a year before, Mr. John Cranch (the C----h of Constable’s letter) had presented Smith with a sketch of the convent. Constable, therefore, refers to the swift supersession of Cranch’s sketch by Smith’s drawing after the fire.