On the opposite side of the lane is Frognal Lodge, the probable site of Alderman Boydell’s house, who some years before his death had moved from North End to Frognal, and is said to have been the near neighbour and friend of Lord Alvanley, whom he outlived a few months. Abrahams tells us that the house, gardens, grounds, lands, coach-house, and stables belonging to this ‘grand encourager of art,’ as he truly calls him, and which had lately been sold for £3,400, had been rated at £70 per annum, but should have been rated at £150. The discovery came too late to be rectified. The art-loving Alderman and famous print-seller, whose house had supplied, not only the chief cities of Europe, but those of the whole civilized world, with the highest productions of the painter’s and engraver’s art, found himself ruined by the long-continued war, which effectually closed commercial intercourse with foreign countries, and caused him such serious losses that he was compelled to petition Parliament to be allowed to dispose of the large stock of pictures and engravings on hand by lottery,[82] which took place after his death (1804-5). For years he had cherished the idea of forming a gallery of paintings of Shakespearian characters and scenes, that should be at once an offering to the genius of his immortal countryman and the crown of his own efforts to exculpate art in England from the subordinate status it held in comparison with that of other nations. To this end he had engaged the most famous artists of his day—Sir Joshua Reynolds, Romney, Fuseli, Northcote, Blake, and many others (amongst them he himself was numbered)—and had built a handsome gallery (afterwards the British Institution) in Pall Mall for the reception and exhibition of their works and the engravings taken from them. There is something very pathetic in the old man’s letter, which his friend and fellow-Alderman, Sir J. William Andrews, read in the House of Commons, pleading, after a life and fortune expended in perfecting and accumulating these treasures of art, to be allowed to dispose of them by lottery, in order that at the close of a long and honourable life—he was eighty-five years of age—he might be enabled to pay his just debts. He ‘knows no other way by which it can be effected but by a lottery, and if the Legislature will have the goodness to grant a permission for that purpose, they will, at least, have the assurance of the even tenor of a long life that it will be fairly and honourably conducted.’ The objects were his pictures, galleries, drawings, etc., which, unconnected with the copper-plates and trade, ‘are much more than sufficient, if properly disposed of, to pay all he owes in the world.’ He hopes that every honest man at any age will feel for his anxiety to discharge his debts, ‘but at his advanced age it becomes doubly desirable.’