In 1825 he was called to Paris, where he painted Charles X., the Dauphin, and others, and received the title of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. The Academies of St. Luke in Rome, and those of Florence, Venice, Bologna, Turin, Vienna, and Copenhagen, had given him honorary memberships; the Fine Arts Academy of America had done the same, and there were other bodies that had expressed their sentiments in similar form. As he approached his sixtieth year, Sir Thomas would seem to have become conscious of failing health and the double burden of old age and loneliness. He had acquired every honour within his grasp, but he had lost his best friends through death, and monetary worries still troubled him. This last fact is the more surprising, because his prices were now very high indeed. They ranged from two hundred guineas for a head to seven hundred for an “extra length portrait,” and even at these high prices there was no lack of patronage. He had no extravagances of a discreditable kind, but he could not resist the chance of buying a fine drawing, whether old or new, and as, when his collection was sold after his death for twenty thousand pounds, it was said to have fetched far less than it cost, one large source of expenditure is accounted for. Then again the President was a singularly generous man, who could not refuse an appeal, and some of those who were round him were quick to take advantage of his weakness. Making every allowance for his expenditure as collector and philanthropist, it is hard to understand why he could earn so much and have so little. Even when he painted the portrait of Sir Robert Peel he wrote letters asking for the money before the work was finished. Happily the statesman was a good and understanding friend; not only did he entertain the artist very frequently, but he commissioned him to paint a gallery of distinguished Englishmen for his country house--a commission the painter did not live to execute. In the late twenties of the nineteenth century, Sir Thomas discovered a serious state of mind and became a churchman. The death of Mrs. Wolfe, to whom reference has been made, in the year 1829, grieved him so deeply that he laid aside his brush for a month. The Irish Academy gave him its honorary membership, and the city of Bristol, in which he was born, gave its freedom, and these were the last of his honours. Those about him noted an ever-increasing feebleness, a failing interest in life, though he stuck manfully to his duty, and early in January 1830 the end came. He was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral by the side of Reynolds and Benjamin West. All the Academicians attended, scores of the aristocracy sent mourning coaches, and Sir Robert Peel was among the pall-bearers. III THE PAINTER’S WORK