Sir Joshua offered to the Royal Academy his collection of paintings by the great masters at a low price. But, much to his mortification and amazement, his proposal was declined; and he exhibited them publicly in the Haymarket for the benefit of his servant Ralph. This transaction gave rise to the suspicion that Reynolds shared in the profits; and two lines of Butler―― “A squire he had whose name was Ralph, Who in the adventure went one-half,”―― were applied with audacious and merciless malevolence. He was soon beyond the reach of such assailants and their weapons of offense. After a visit to Beaconsfield, the residence of his mighty friend Burke, his health and spirits sunk with the rapidity which frequently heralds a speedy dissolution; and on the 23d of February, 1792, he expired, with little apparent pain, in the sixty-ninth year of his prosperous life. His body was laid in St. Paul’s Cathedral, by the side of Sir Christopher Wren; and a monument, graven by Flaxman, has since been erected to his memory. SIR FRANCIS CHANTREY. The artistic genius of England, however potent and exuberant it may be, has never been so freely or prominently displayed in sculpture as in poetry or painting; nor has it had equal encouragement. The creations of the sculptor’s fancy and the emanations of his skill, unquestionable as may be their merits and real their beauties, have never ranked very high in the favor of the multitude. Many, whose sympathy might otherwise be followed by more substantial tokens, understand full well that a portrait costs less, and is more readily appreciated by their neighbors, than a marble bust; and even with those few who pride themselves in rivaling the Medici in their patronage of art, and lay the flattering unction to their souls that they know something about it, the popularity of sculpture is by no means excessive. But the name of Chantrey is one which his countrymen have reason to regard with patriotic pride and satisfaction. He formed his style on the beauty and manliness of his native land; he was thoroughly her own. His taste in this respect was created when the inhabitant――while a boy――of a quiet and secluded village; and it was adhered to with splendid results when he was depicting statesmen, warriors, orators, and poets――our Pitts, Wellingtons, Grattans, and Scotts. Instead of struggling in vain to recall cold shapes and uncongenial visions from remote antiquity and distant realms, he embodied in simple but fascinating works, for the instruction and gratification of native talent and taste, the life, manners, and costume which came around him in his daily existence. Thus his works are not only more popular than those of the sculptors who had preceded him, but they are fitted to excite no small portion of that sympathy which one feels when gazing on the canvas, whereon the features of some distinguished man or beautiful woman have been gloriously portrayed by the pencil of Reynolds or Raeburn. His success