The remainder of his life was a gradual decline; his sight grew weaker, and his strength less, until February 23, 1792, when he died easily, never having suffered much pain. The King directed that his body should lie in state in the Academy rooms in Somerset House. The funeral was grand and solemn; the pall-bearers were dukes, marquises, earls, and lords; ninety-one carriages followed the hearse, in which were the first nobles, scholars, and prelates of the realm, with all the members and students of the Academy. He was buried near Sir Christopher Wren, in St. Paul's Cathedral, where Vandyck had already been laid, and where, in later years, a goodly number of painters have been buried around him. In 1813, a statue, by Flaxman, was erected to his memory near the choir of the cathedral, and a Latin inscription recounts the talents and virtues of the great man whom it commemorates. [Illustration: THE LADIES WALDEGRAVE. (FROM A PAINTING BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.)] Having thus traced the story of Sir Joshua's life, it now remains to speak of him more especially as an artist. His highest fame is as a portrait painter, and as such he was a great genius. He had the power to reproduce the personal peculiarities of his subjects with great exactness; he was also able to perceive their qualities of temper, mind, and character, and he made his portraits so vivid with these attributes that they were likenesses of the minds as well as of the persons of his subjects. In his portrait of Goldsmith, self-esteem is as prominent as the nose; passion and energy are in every line of Burke's face and figure; and whenever his subject possessed any individual characteristics, they were plainly shown in Reynolds's portraits. So many of these pictures are famous that we can not speak of them in detail. Perhaps no one portrait is better known than that of the famous actress, Mrs. Sarah Siddons, as the Tragic Muse. It is a noble example of an idealized portrait, and it is said that the "Isaiah" of Michael Angelo suggested the manner in which it is painted. Sir Thomas Lawrence declared this to be the finest portrait of a women in the world, and it is certain that this one picture would have made any painter famous. Sir Joshua inscribed his name on the border of the robe, and courteously explained to the lady, "I could not lose the honor this opportunity afforded me of going down to posterity on the hem of your garment." The original of this work is said to be that in the gallery of the Duke of Westminster; a second is in the Dulwich Gallery. In speaking of Sir Joshua as a portrait painter, Mr. Ruskin says: "Considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him the prince of portrait painters. Titian paints nobler pictures, and Vandyck had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of heart and temper."