the architect, and the painters Vouet and Fouquieres, thwarted and opposed him in every particular; until at length, worn out and disgusted, he applied for permission to return to Rome. This he obtained with some difficulty, and not without a stipulation that he should revisit Paris within twelve months. It is not improbable that the condition would never have been fulfilled; but the King’s death in the following year released him from the obligation. The last works executed by Poussin in Paris were two allegorical subjects: the one, Time bringing Truth to light, and delivering her from the fiends, Malice and Envy; in which an allusion was most probably meant to the controversies in which he had been engaged: the other, in which his intention is less equivocal, is an imitation of bas-relief, in the ceiling of the Louvre, where his opponents, Fouquieres, Le Mercier, and Vouet, are consigned to the derision of posterity under the figures of Folly, Ignorance, and Envy. Perhaps the happiest, and not an inconsiderable, portion of Poussin’s life, was that which intervened between his return to Rome and his death. Experience of the cabals and disquietudes of Paris had no doubt taught him to value the classical serenity of his adopted home. Although in possession of great and undisputed fame, and sufficiently affluent, he continued to labour in his art with unrelaxing diligence, if that may be called labour which constituted his highest gratification. His talents and moral worth drew round him a large circle of the learned and the polite, who anxiously sought his society during his leisure hours; and in his evening walks on the Pincian Hill, he might have been said to resemble one of the philosophers of antiquity, surrounded by his friends and disciples. Thus he descended, with tranquil dignity, into the vale of life. In 1665 he suffered from a stroke of the palsy, and, shortly after, the death of his wife plunged him into the deepest affliction. He perceived his own end to be approaching, and awaited it with calm resignation. He died in his 72d year, A. D. 1665, and was buried with public honours in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina.