Whilst Villiers employed portrait-painters on himself and on his family, he did not forget the old man at Brookesby, long since gone to the grave. Cornelius Jansen, by his order, painted a portrait of his father; probably from some family picture. It was in the possession of Horace Walpole, “less handsome,” he says, “but extremely like his son.” The patronage extended by Charles I. to architects[174] was often directed by Buckingham; for the King and the favourite had but one soul between them. To exalt and improve the art of painting, they summoned foreign architects as well as painters to England, remunerated them liberally, and treated them with the courtesy due to one of the noblest of professions. Charles delighted to dabble with his brush on the canvas, his hand directed by the master, with whom he sat for hours. Buckingham’s few leisure days were devoted to his buildings and paintings. Amongst the English builders who worked at the Banqueting-house, under Inigo Jones, was Nicholas Stone, who was in 1619 appointed master-mason to the King, at the usual salary, of twelve pence a-day; but the extra work he executed for Charles was amply paid; and his salary during the two years he worked at Whitehall amounted to four shillings and tenpence the day.[175] Nicholas Stone designed four of the dials at St. James’s and Whitehall.[176] He rebuilt the fountains at Theobald’s and Nonsuch; his drawings are, it is to be feared, lost. He was the statuary employed by the Countess of Dorset to set up at Westminster the monument of Spenser the poet, for which he was paid forty pounds. His great talent lay in tombs; amongst others, he erected one for the Countess of Buckingham, the Duke’s mother, three years after her son’s death, in 1631, in Westminster Abbey, for which he received 560_l._ Doubtless, therefore, he was continually employed by Buckingham, and Stone’s various performances must have been just what the Duke required. He was the modest architect, who did not disdain to form and chisel the piers for gates--Inigo Jones designing them,--at Holland House. He built the great gate of St. Mary’s Church at Oxford, and the stone gates for the Physic Garden in that city,--also designed by Inigo. The figure of the Nile at Somerset House was by Stone; his skill, like that of Inigo, is familiar to us, though we may almost have forgotten the hand that had so much “cunning.” At York House, at Wanstead, New Hall and Burleigh, his fine face, with his love-locks, his plain collar, and tight doublet, were, we may be sure, often to be seen before ruin and desertion darkened those once splendid homes of Villiers. Footnote 174: Walpole, p. 149, _passim_. Footnote 175: Walpole, p. 166. Footnote 176: There were five dials at Whitehall; a Mr. Gunter drew the lines, and wrote a pamphlet on the use of them, in 1624. “One, too,” says Horace Walpole, “may still be extant.” Vertue saw them at Buckingham House, from whence they were sold.