Walpole knew little of these lead-working sculptors, his only notice occurring under “Carpentier or Charpentiere”--our Carpenter above--“a statuary much employed by the Duke of Chandos at Canons, was for some years principal assistant to Van Ost (our Van Nost) an artist of whom I have found no memorials, and afterwards set up for himself. Towards the end of his life he kept a manufactory of leaden statues in Piccadilly and died in 1737, aged above sixty.” The original Van Nost came from Mechlin, and married in England the widow of another Dutch sculptor. In the account books of the building of Somerset House the following entry, which occurs under 1778, is interesting as showing John Cheere working on particular works, and for giving us the composition of the metal and the price. “John Cheere, figure maker; to moulding, casting, and finishing four large sphinxes in a strong substantial manner, lead and block tin, at each £31.” It is curious if Lord Burlington gave the critical dictum attributed to him, that there were so many lead garden statues at his villa at Chiswick, in 1892 dismantled by the Duke of Devonshire. Doubtless they belonged to that garden described by Walpole as in the Italian taste, where “the lavish quantity of urns and sculpture behind the garden front should be retrenched,” a wish that time accomplishes. There was a Bacchus, a Venus, an Achilles, a Samson, and Cain and Abel. In the first quadrangle at Knole there are two good reproductions of the antique, one being a crouching Venus. In the courtyard of Burton Agnes in Yorkshire stands a Fighting Gladiator. Studley Royal, near Ripon, is a fine example of the best effort of park-gardening, if the phrase be allowed, for the term “landscape gardening” is degraded to mean productions in the cemetery style, an affair of wriggling paths, little humps, and nursery specimens, which might best be described as _cemetery gardening_, and between which and the manner of Kent there is no parallel. Here lakes in ordered circles and crescents occupy the grassy flat between hanging woods, and several groups of lead statuary stand above the water. In the beautiful old gardens at Melbourne in Derbyshire are a large number of lead figures, two of which are drawn in _The Formal Garden_.[26] There are two heroic sized figures of Perseus and Andromeda beside the great water; a Flying Mercury after Giovanni Bologna; two slaves, which are painted black, with white drapery, carrying vases on salvers; and several Cupids in pairs or single. Of these “the single figures” Mr. Blomfield says “are about two feet high. One has fallen off his tree, another is flying upward, another shooting, another shaping his bow with a spoke shave. All of these are painted and some covered with stone dust to imitate stone, a gratuitous insult to lead which will turn to a delicate silver grey if left to its own devices.” [26] Blomfield and Thomas. Macmillan, 1892. [Illustration: FIG. 44.--Cymbal Player.]