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magnificent. He paints monsters, and then, with the greatest gravity imaginable, assures us that the creatures are every day samples of walking humanity. We are warned not to be astonished at the people whom Mr. Willis has met, inasmuch as truth is stranger than fiction, and then we are introduced to individuals whom nature disowns, and no novelist but himself would have the courage to father. It is true enough that real life presents us often with pictures too startling for romance itself to deal with, but neither in real life nor in the realms of fiction do people walk on their heads, or drive about the streets in a state of nudity, or sing comic songs at church, or perform any other similar absurdity peculiar to the heroes of Bedlam and of Mr. Willis's ridiculous tales. We decline to fatigue our readers with a description of the arrant nonsense which this American gentleman has condescended to write. It is equally unnecessary to show that the assertion made by Mr. Willis, to the effect that he has drawn his pictures from decent society, into which he says he has found admittance, is a gross calumny upon mankind at large. It is sufficient to express our unaffected regret that the literature of America should-be dishonoured, and the good sense of Englishmen offended, by the publication of three such volumes as those to which our attentior has been directed.

August 27th, 1850.

FRANCIS CHANTREY.

Ir is rather more than a year since we held it our duty to remonstrate against the insult which had been offered to the memory of Chantrey by the publication of a work that ought to have brought to the cheek of the Royal Academy the deepest vermillion at its disposal. "Jones on Chantrey was about the weakest attempt at biography with which a friend has ever contrived to damage departed worth. As we took occasion to show at the time, the volume added very little to the knowledge we already possessed of the sculptor's history. It is now our painful office to state that even that little is nearly all wrong. In the smallest incidents connected with the life of Chantrey, Jones bungled; his Recollections, it appears, were as muddled as his philosophical disquisitions. The latter, of course, spoke for themselves; the former were not to be impeached except upon authority. That authority is now before us. Mr. Holland, born in the same county as Chantrey, if not in the same village, and thoroughly familiar, from personal observation as well as minute inquiry, with the sculptor's early doings, pronounces all that part of Mr. Jones's unfortunate book, which we innocently and charitably took for granted, 66 meagre, vague, and erroneous in a remarkable degree;" utterly useless for history, and certainly of

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small value as a romance. It is really startling to note the carelessness of a writer, and executor to boot, who, with R.A. attached to his name, came before the world in his biography as the Representative of that important body who, with tens of thousands of Chantrey's money bequeathed to them, had some interest in maintaining the good name of their deceased benefactor. In the date of his hero's birth, Jones is at fault; in describing his father's occupation, he is incorrect; in stating Chantrey's age at the time of his father's decease, Jones is out by four years; in speaking of his first views with regard to his profession, Jones misstates them; in defining the occupation of the master to whom Chantrey was apprenticed, in explaining the manner in which the latter threw up his indentures, in fixing the period of the sculptor's marriage, in naming the sum which he received as his wife's dowry, in we know not how many other matters besides, Jones puts down, not that which he knows to be false, but that which, according to Mr. Holland, is the very opposite to truth. In fact the Recollections of the Royal Academician are dear at any price, and not worth much as a gift, except indeed to elicit such corrections as Mr. Holland has furnished to the future biographer, whose place, whatever Mr. Holland's merits may be in other respects, that gentleman has by no means forestalled.

One chapter in Chantrey's life may be pronounced finished in the volume at our side, but only one. Nothing more is to be said of Chantrey's career up to the moment of his settling in London and making his great successful start, than Mr. Holland

has supplied.

The history of Chantrey in the country and struggling for his position is complete. His further history in the metropolis and with that position well secured has yet to be told. For such concluding chapters there must surely exist good available materials. A few months before his death Chantrey placed in the hands of Allan Cunningham all the letters he had preserved of that old and faithful fellow labourer and serviceable ally, with the remark that "they might be useful to him hereafter," language which Cunningham had reason to interpret into a request that at the fitting time he should write his friend's life. Allan Cunningham, it is well known, survived his patron only a very few months, but had he lived, no memoir of Chantrey would have appeared from his hand. "Honest Allan" according to his own account, knew too much to become Chantrey's biographer. He had lived for many years with the sculptor in the closest intimacy, and from his pen, as he feared, the public would probably look for more than he had the consent of his own heart to give. Public duty clashed with private affection, and the poet held his peace. But the letters above spoken of and other memoranda are not lost, and since the considerations that influenced the determination of Allan Cunningham can have no weight with his survivors, we trust that an opportunity will speedily be taken to finish a labour which Mr. Holland has certainly most conscientiously and industriously commenced.

Francis Chantrey was a poor boy. His father rented a small farm at Jordanthorpe, near Sheffield, and died when his son was only twelve years of age.

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The widow, in the first year of her bereavement, married again, taking unto herself as husbandmuch to the disgust of her son, who would never call his mother by the name she had acquired on her second marriage-a farm servant of her own, by name Job Hall. Francis, after the manner of stepsons, was quickly placed in a grocer's shop in Sheffield, but after a few weeks' misery behind the counter he was removed, at his own earnest request, and apprenticed to "Robert Ramsay, of Sheffield, in the county of York, carver and gilder," the contents of whose shopwindow had caught the eye of the grocer's boy and communicated, as is the wont of such instruments, potently and mysteriously with his genius. Ten pounds were paid at the binding, and the apprenticeship was for a long seven years. The date of the indenture is Sept. 19, 1797, when Chantrey was sixteen years old.

Mr. Ramsey, besides being a carver in wood, was also a dealer in prints and plaster models. Chantrey at once set about imitating both. He began to work the moment he set foot in the carver's shop, and he ceased his labours only when he died. In a former brief notice of his character we have called attention to the thoroughly English qualities in virtue of which Chantrey won his way to renown. His example is valuable chiefly in this regard. His patience, industry, and steady perseverance achieved everything for him that he subsequently won. His biographers (Mr. Holland as well as Mr. Jones) place Chantrey upon a pedestal somewhat too high for his deserts. We presume the amiable fault is inevitable in all biographical attempts.