unworthy of a grand-daughter of Charles the First. The distinguished architect, however, had not pursued his prosperous course without making enemies; and the time at length arrived when they could gratify their hoarded malice. When the first representative of the House of Brunswick left his delightful Electorate to ascend the throne of Great Britain, Wren was in his eighty-second year; and though so often thwarted in his designs during three reigns by citizens, and kings, and commissioners, he had done wonders, and on every side there were traces of his rare and fertile genius. The new sovereign, however, was almost as devoid of taste or capacity as he was destitute of virtue or popularity; and, from the beginning, he regarded the venerable architect with an inimical eye. After a lapse of four years the public learned, with astonishment and indignation, that Sir Christopher was dismissed from his office, and replaced by a wretched pretender, to whose undistinguished name Pope has given a somewhat unenviable notoriety. The old knight had lived too long, and seen too much of the world, in a most eventful age, to be very deeply affected by this circumstance; though the insult touched his friends to the heart. He removed from his official residence in Scotland Yard, and betook himself to rural retirement. He had long survived his first wife; and not relishing a prolonged widowerhood, he sought and found a second bride in the daughter of a peer of Ireland. He now took a house at Hampton Court, where he passed the greater part of his remaining years in study and contemplation of the Holy Scriptures, which cheered his solitude and consoled him in his preparation for a higher state of existence. He indulged in a sleep in his easy chair after dinner, maintained the utmost serenity, and exhibited all his wonted vivacity. Gradually his limbs, which had been active, failed; and his movements thus became dependent on the assistance of others. Now and then he rejoiced in a visit to the metropolis, to inspect the repairs of Westminster Abbey, and look once more on the dome of St. Paul’s. His intellect remained unimpaired long after his bodily vigor had ceased. A journey between London and Hampton Court, then a more formidable affair to a person of advanced age than it has since become, proved more than his frame could endure, and, after a short illness, he died on the 27th of February, 1723. His corpse was consigned to the vaults of the magnificent cathedral, which stands alike the monument and the master-piece of his architectural genius, as his most appropriate epitaph is the brief inscription which has been alluded to at the commencement of this sketch. Sixty-nine years later the surrounding earth was disturbed on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds; and the mortal remains of the illustrious painter, whose magic pencil had redeemed Englishmen from the reproach of being indebted to foreign nations for artistic skill,