"This little man cuts us all out," said one generous sculptor to another, willing to acknowledge Flaxman's great superiority. Honours now flowed in upon him. He was made an Associate of the Royal Academy. He was given the Professorship of the Chair of Sculpture. At his first lecture he was enthusiastically cheered. He had climbed to the highest height of his art. It almost seemed as if no honour remained to be bestowed. He was surrounded by fame and applause, but he was in no wise uplifted. So the years went on in the delight of the work he loved. But, unexpectedly and all unknown to his friends, his life was drawing to a close. In the winter of 1826 he caught a cold, seeming for a time to be slightly, though not seriously, ailing. In the beginning of December he grew much worse, but he would not go to bed. "When I lie I cannot breathe," he said. So, sitting up to the end, and with scarce a struggle, he passed away on the 7th of December. They buried him quietly in the churchyard of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. There was no great publicity, no large concourse of people. Just a few friends, a few artists--the greatest--were there, men who in tremulous, hushed voices said to each other they "had lost something greater and dearer than they should see again." Turning from the ending of his life, we cannot but feel that we are turning from the record of a man who has lived it well. An enthusiastic admirer has said, "He was a remarkable mixture of simplicity and genius--were you to try any other ingredients you would scarcely form so glorious a creature." And we hardly think he was far wrong. We can see very clearly the fine simplicity of his nature in his treatment of his workmen. They were to him rather friends than servants. They in their turn repaid him with a warm and devoted affection, calling him "the best master God ever made." To the end, as well in time of difficulty and of toil as in time of triumph, the man retained very much those qualities that had drawn out people's love for him in boyhood, the kindly word from the customer in the shop behind the counter. The world offered him of its best, as it has a way of doing to those who do well for themselves, but it had no power to draw him from his work and the simplicity of his simple home-life. It was only and always to that which is highest and best that he gave of his genius. That noble mind of his could stoop to nothing less. In churches all over England are to be found beautiful creations of his. In him were at once goodness and genius linked together. "If ever purity visited this earth," someone has said, "it remained with Flaxman." SIR HUMPHREY DAVY.