George in the Water, 1824-A Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton touching the Great Civil War, set down by a Gentleman of the Middle Temple, 1824-On the Athenian Orators, 1824-A Prophetic Account of a grand National Epic Poem, to be entitled "The Wellingtoniad," and to be published A.D. 2824, 1824-On Mitford's History of Greece, 1824.

Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review:John Dryden, 1828-History, 1828-Mill on Government, 1829-Bentham's Defence of Mill, 1829-Utilitarian Theory of Government, 1829Sadler's Law of Population, 1830-Sadler's Refutation Refuted, 1831-Dumont's Recollections of Mirabeau, 1832-Barère's Memoirs, 1844.

Biographies Contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica: Francis Atterbury, 1853-John Bunyan, 1854-Oliver Goldsmith, 1856-Samuel Johnson, 1856-William Pitt, 1859.

Miscellaneous Poems, including Epitaph on Henry Martin, 1812-Lines to the Memory of Pitt, 1813-A Radical War Song, 1820 - The Battle of Moncontour, 1824 - The Battle of Naseby, 1824-Sermon in a Churchyard, 1825Translation of a Poem by Arnault, 1826-Dies Iræ, 1826-The Marriage of Tirza and Ahirad, 1827-The Country Clergyman's Trip to Cambridge, 1827-Song, 1827-Ode on the Deliverance of Venice, translated from Filicaia, 1828The Last Buccaneer, 1839 Epitaph on a Jacobite, 1845-Lines written in August, 1847.

Epitaphs, &c, including Inscription on the Statue of Lord William Bentinck, 1835-Epitaph on Sir Benjamin Heath Malkin, 1837-Epitaph on Lord Metcalfe, 1847.

The best likeness of the late Lord Macaulay is a photograph taken August 8, 1856, by Mr. Claudet, in the possession of T. F. Ellis, Esq. This portrait has, by Mr. Ellis's permission, been engraved for the present work.

The Life of Sir Martin Archer Shee, President of the Royal Academy, F.R S., D.C.L. By his Son, MARTIN ARCHER SHEE, of the Middle Temple, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 856, price 21s. cloth.

[May 21, 1860.

THIS HIS Biography is not exclusively, or indeed mainly, a record of the professional and official career of the late President. It deals more fully in personal and social details connected with his life and times, than in matters of peculiar or technical interest to the Artist; although, from the circumstances in which the Royal Academy was placed, and the kind of public contest in which it was involved during Sir Martin's Presi

dency, a considerable portion of the second volume is necessarily devoted to questions affecting the rights and interests of that Institution..

The chief incidents of Sir Martin's early life are sufficiently striking to justify his biographer in dwelling, as he has done, at rather unusual length on those preliminary stages of personal history which, in works of this character, are often dismissed in a few pages.

Born in Dublin, in Dec. 1769, of Roman Catholic ancestors, and of ancient and honourable lineage on both sides of the house, he was, from the reduced fortunes of his family, fated to enter on life under circumstances nearly as unfavourable to the development of his talents, and his prospects of worldly success, as could well have attended the worldly début of one sprung from the lower ranks of society.

Having evinced an early taste for drawing, and being anxious to devote himself to the professional study of the arts, he was, at the age of thirteen, placed as a student in a Drawing Academy connected with the Royal Dublin Society, and presided over by an able draughtsman of the name of West, where he carried away all the prizes offered to the emulation of the pupils.

So rapid was his progress, that by the time he had completed his seventeenth year, he was in full practice as a portrait painter among the higher circles of Dublin; while his remarkable powers of mind, carefully developed by spontaneous and assiduous study, secured for him a degree of social popularity rarely enjoyed at so early an age.

Seeing but little chance of improvement in his profession while he remained in Ireland, where art was at a very low ebb, he determined, contrary to the wishes and entreaties of his family, to remove to London, which he accordingly did. in the month of June 1788, being then eighteen years of age.

On his arrival in the British metropolis, he was introduced to the notice of Sir Joshua Reynolds and to some other distinguished persons, by his illustrious friend and countryman, Edmund Burke.

He became an exhibitor at the Royal Academy for the first time in 1789. In 1791 he sent five portraits to the exhibition; in 1792 he exhibited seven works; and in 1796 he reached what is now the full academical number of eight portraits. Continuing equally industrious for many successive years, he was in such favour with his fellow-artists that he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1798. In 1800 he was elected a Royal Academician; and continued to produce portraits with such amazing readiness, that for a

time he was in nearly as great request as Sir Thomas Lawrence.

In 1805 Mr. Shee at once established his reputation as a poet by the publication of "Rhymes on Art," a vigorous satire on the dilettanti of the day, embodying an energetic appeal to the taste and patriotism of the higher classes of society and the authorities of the state in favour of the arts, and urging the adoption of more vigorous efforts for the encouragement of the higher departments of the pencil.

The great success of this work placed him at once in the foremost rank of literary aspirants, and added great social distinction to the eminence which he had achieved in his profession. The influence exercised by this publication on the classes to whom it was chiefly addressed, was significantly exhibited by the establishment of the British Institution within the next two years,-an event which was certainly mainly attributable to the remonstrance in question.

-a

The publication of "Elements of Art,"didactic poem on the subject of painting,-of which the "Rhymes" were the preliminary and experimental announcement, took place in 1809, and fully sustained the credit which the author had obtained in the literary world from his former venture. The estimation in which these works and their author were held by the most distinguished of his contemporaries, may be judged of by the lines which Byron devoted to the subject in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers:

"And here let Shee and genius find a place,
Whose pen and peneil yield an equal grace;
To guide whose hand the sister arts combine,
And trace the Poet's as the Painter's line;
Whose magic touch can bid the canvas glow,
And pour the easy rhyme's harmonious flow,
While honours, doubly merited, attend
The Poet's rival, but the Painter's friend."

In 1814 he again entered the literary arena with a poem connected with the Art, viz., "The Commemoration of Reynolds," a short but animated effusion suggested by the exhibition of that great artist's works at the British Gallery.

From this period his career offers no incident of particular note, until the year 1824, when the official mutilation of his tragedy of Alasco, by the over-zealous pen of the recently appointed Examiner of Plays, George Colman the younger,-to whom the functions of the Lord Chamberlain, as regards the supervision of Dramatic proprieties were practically delegated,-had the effect of excluding that work, then in rehearsal at Covent Garden Theatre, from the stage. The incident created much public interest at the time.

In the year 1828 he published, without his name, a work of fiction in three volumes, entitled "Old Court."

The death of Sir Thomas Lawrence, in January, 1830, unexpectedly placed within Mr. Shee's reach the highest honour and greatest prize of the profession, - the Presidency of the Royal Academy; to which he was elected in succession to that great artist. On the 20th July in the same year he received the honour of knighthood from the hands of King William the Fourth, who had then recently ascended the throne.

The remainder of Sir Martin's career is closely connected with the history of the Royal Academy, over which he presided during twenty years; conducting their affairs, through a long period of unexampled difficulty as regards the public position of that body, with a zeal, an energy, and a triumphant success which earned for him the most enthusiastic and devoted admiration of his academic colleagues; a fact of which this biography records the most signal and striking proofs.

During the reign of King William, the personal favour and feelings of His Majesty, whose entire confidence Sir Martin enjoyed with regard to all matters connected with the conduct and interests of the Academy, effectually sustained and strengthened that body in the struggle which, through their president, they had to encounter with their professional and political opponents: a struggle on the merits of which much light is thrown by the official correspondence now first published, and the proceedings of the Committee of the House of Commons on the Fine Arts, in the session of 1836; the material portions of which are placed before the reader either in the text or the appendices.

On the death of William IV. in 1837, in the summer of the same year, the attacks on the Royal Academy were resumed with increased vigour, chiefly under the guidance of the late Mr. Hume, who, having failed to convince the president of the expediency of throwing open the exhibition gratis to the public, during a portion of the period devoted to the annual display, attacked the Academy and its chief in the House of Commons, and at public meetings, in a manner which eventually drew down upon him a rather severe castigation from the pen of Sir Martin, in the pamphlet published by him in 1838, entitled "A Letter to Joseph Hume, Esq., M.P."

About the year 1843 Sir Martin's health began to give way under the attacks of a vertiginous complaint, which gradually increased in severity; and in the summer of 1845, being wholly incapable of bodily exertion or sustained mental labour, he placed his resignation as President in the hands of the Academy and the Queen. An unanimous address from his colleagues, however, couched in terms of grateful affection and enthusiastic admiration, hardly to be surpassed in energy of expression, presented a forcible appeal against his