was bestowing on the giddy angels of Carlton House a decency that was within a little of dull, a simplicity that was almost sombreness, a purity that was prudery! The beauties of George III.'s court were not displeased to be pictorially credited with a levity they did not dare to live up or down to; and the ladies of the Prince's court, too honest to assume a virtue they had not, now hastened to be represented by an artist who appeared so admirably to comprehend their allurements. Poor Mr. Hoppner was deserted by the Whig ladies; he had only now the Whig lords to paint: unless he took up with landscape art, for which he had decided talent, as many of the backgrounds to his pictures demonstrate. He grew peevish and irritable. He took to abusing the old masters, and cried out at the neglect of living men. Examining a modern work, he would say: 'Ay, it's a noble picture, but it has one damning defect--it's a thing of _to-day._ Prove it to be but two hundred years old, and from the brush of a famous man, and here's two thousand guineas for it.' Northcote tells of him: 'I once went with him to the hustings, to vote for Home Tooke, and when they asked me what I was, I said, "A painter." At this Hoppner was very mad all the way home, and said I should have called myself "a portrait-painter." I replied that the world had no time to trouble their heads about such distinctions.' Hoppner now produced but few pictures, and these met with small success. He looked thin and haggard, talked incoherently, gave way to bitter repinings and despondency. He resented and misinterpreted, as has been shown, Lawrence's inquiries as to his health. Certainly there is every appearance of feeling in Lawrence's letter, where he writes to a friend, 'You will be sorry to hear it. My most powerful competitor, he whom only to my friends I have acknowledged as my rival, is, I fear, sinking to the grave. I mean, of course, Hoppner. He was always afflicted with bilious and liver complaints (and to these must be greatly attributed the irritation of his mind), and now they have ended in a confirmed dropsy. But though I think he cannot recover, I do not wish that his last illness should be so reported by me. You will believe that I can sincerely feel the loss of a brother-artist from whose works I have often gained instruction, and who has gone by my side in the race these eighteen years.' Hoppner died on the 23d January 1810, in the fifty-first year of his age. To quote Lawrence's letters again: 'The death of Hoppner leaves me, it is true, without a rival, and this has been acknowledged to me by the ablest of my present competitors; but I already find one small misfortune attending it--namely, that I have no sharer in the watchful jealousy, I will not say hatred, that follows the situation.' A son of Hoppner's was consul at Venice, and a friend of Lord Byron's in 1819.