seemed to fail him; he ceased to have faith in himself; he was preyed on by nervous dejection; weighed down with dark alarms and vague forebodings. Soon his head is swimming and his right hand numb with incipient paralysis. Hayley visits him for the last time in April 1799, and had 'the grief of perceiving that his increasing weakness of body and mind afforded only a gloomy prospect for the residue of his life.' He lays down his brush for ever. Suddenly, without a word to any one of his intentions, he takes the northern coach and arrives at Kendal. Fainting and exhausted, he is received with the utmost tenderness and affection by his wife. No word of reproach for the neglect and solitude to which he had doomed her for so many years escapes her lips. With unremitting solicitude, with religious earnestness, this loving, forgiving woman tends the sick-bed of the sinking man. His mind expires before his body; for months he remains hopelessly imbecile, free from suffering, but wholly unconscious; breathing his last at Kendal on the 15th of November 1802, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. The inconsistency manifest between Romney's wanton cruelty in his domestic character, and his reputation among his intimates and contemporaries for great kindliness of nature, generosity, and general worth, is remarkable enough. There are many men, however, who appear to the least advantage when seen by the light of their own fireside. Hayley says much of his friend's _extreme sensibility_:' his lips,' writes the poet, 'quivered with emotions of pity at the sight of distress or at the relation of a pathetic story.' Cumberland mentions that the painter was, 'by constitution, prone to tears.' Yet his charity was not for home wear; the distress he did not see troubled him very little. It is vain to seek for any sufficient apology for Romney's shameful treatment of his wife and children. If it were possible to forget this deep stain upon his character he would seem, in all other relations of life, to be entitled to esteem and commendation. For the poor and needy he was ready, not merely with his sensibility, but with his purse. To his friends he was ever faithful and liberal. After attaining professional eminence he was almost indifferent to the emoluments of his art, prizing money much less for its own sake than for the recognition of his position and abilities that it demonstrated; while to all young artists he was especially kind and indulgent. He was the first to encourage Flaxman, and to appreciate and applaud his works; was ever the cordial and loving friend of the sculptor, as their correspondence amply testifies. 'I always remember,' says Flaxman, 'Mr. Romney's notice of my boyish years and productions with gratitude; his original and striking conversation; his masterly, grand, and feeling compositions are continually before me; and I still feel the benefits of his acquaintance and recommendations.'