The man who could undertake, alone, and with no certain prospect of remuneration, one of the greatest works which has been attempted within two centuries--and that, too, with only sixteen shillings in his pocket; who, during seven years of struggle, prosecuted that work to a completion, often thus labouring all day, while he sat up the greater part of the night finishing some sketch for the publishers, in order to make provision for the passing hour;--such a man presents claims to admiration of higher dignity than even those of genius. The great work undertaken and finished amid these difficulties, is the series of six pictures, of the size of life, representing the progress of civilization, in the Hall of the Society of Arts; and it reflects the highest honor on that useful institution, that its gratuitous reward enabled the artist to enjoy his only permanent, though small income, of about £60 yearly. That such a member should have been ejected from the Royal Academy of Great Britain, in which also he held the Chair of Painting, must be considered as a common calamity both to that body and to himself: to him it certainly was, for the degradation embittered the enjoyment, and very seriously impaired the means, of existence. Barry died in 1806, having been born at Cork in 1741; rising from a sailor boy, chalking his rude fancies on the deck of his father's coaster, self-taught, to be the painter now described--the learned writer on his art--the friend of Samuel Johnson and of Edmund Burke.