"Sincere as my gratitude and pleasing as my emotions must be on being, by the indulgence of the Academy, appointed to address you again, I should feel myself unworthy of this honour were I not to regret the infirm state of health, the unfortunate cause which occasioned the resignation of the Professor of Painting, and disappointed the expectation you had a right to form from the display of his brilliant talents. Severely, however, as this disappointment may be felt by you, it is a consolation to reflect that we still possess him, and that the Academy may still profit by his advice and practical abilities: but what can I offer to mitigate our grief on the awful decree which snatched from us his predecessor, your late lecturer, my departed friend? In him society has lost one of its best members, our Art one of its firmest supporters, the Academy one of its brightest ornaments, and you a solid, experienced, forcible, and lucid instructor. The innate vigour of his mind supplied every want of education; his persevering energy ruled circumstances, and made necessity the handmaid of the art; his judgment, at a very early period, discriminated the art itself from those vehicles of which he possessed, in a very high degree, the most splendid; add to these, that insatiable curiosity, which not only stimulated him to examine every system, and to collect every observation on art, but to court all relative knowledge, and whatever, though more distant, might tend to illustrate his argument, enforce his proofs, or assist his researches; and you have an aggregate of qualities, which, if he had been suffered to complete his course, would have enabled him to present you with a more connected series of instructions for your studies than perhaps ever fell to the lot of any other school, and might have conferred on England the honour of having produced the best combined, least prejudiced, if not the most lofty or extensive system of art. "Such was your teacher:--to expatiate on the artist before his companions, admirers, rivals, and scholars, within these walls, which have so often borne testimony to the splendour and versatility of his powers, would be equally presumption and waste of time: that characteristic truth, that unaffected simplicity and air of life which discriminate his portraits; the decision, the passion, the colour, the effects that animate his history; the solidity of his method, his breadth and mellowness of touch, now fresh before us, with his writings, will survive and consecrate to memory the name of OPIE."