unremitting study, brought on a brain fever, from which he recovered only to sink in a rapid decline.’  All other accounts concur with that of Mrs. Forster, in attributing his illness to the accumulation of pressing commissions:  he viewed the amount with nervous dismay; he became deeply affected; his appetite failed; his looks denoted anguish of body and mind; a quick and overmastering consumption left him strength scarcely sufficient to bring him to London, where he arrived about the middle of September, 1828.  The conclusion of his career was thus related to Mrs. Forster by Sir Thomas Lawrence:—­’Your sad presage has been too fatally verified; the last duties have just been paid to the lamented Mr. Bonington.  Except in the case of Mr. Harlow, I have never known, in my own time, the early death of talent so promising, and so rapidly and obviously improving.  If I may judge from the later direction of his studies, and from remembrance of a morning’s conversation, his mind seemed expanding in every way, and ripening into full maturity of taste and elevated judgment, with that generous ambition which makes confinement to lesser departments in the art painfully irksome and annoying.

  “But the fair guerdon when we hope to find
  Comes the blind Fury with th’ abhorred shears,
  And slits the thin-spun life’”

Having not quite finished his 27th year, he died calmly on the 23rd of September, 1828, and was interred in the vault of St. James’s Church, Pentonville, in the presence of Lawrence, and Howard, and Robson, and the Rev. J.T.  Judkin,—­himself a skilful painter—­an ardent admirer and steadfast friend.

“Bonington was tall, well, and even to appearance, strongly formed.  ’His countenance,’ says the French biographer, ’was truly English; and we loved him for his melancholy air, which became him more than smiles.’  The memory of his person will soon wear away; but it will fare otherwise with his fame.  He lived long enough to assert his title to a high place amongst English landscape-painters, and had produced works which bid fair to be ranked permanently with the foremost.  They are not numerous, but for that very reason they will, perhaps, be the more prized.  A series of engravings amounting to some four and twenty, has been published by Carpenter, from pictures of this artist, some in his own possession, some in the galleries of the Marquess of Lansdown, the Duke of Bedford, and other patrons of art.  The best of these are the landscapes; and of the landscapes, the worthiest are of mingled sea and land—­pieces distinguished by great picturesque beauty, and singular grace of execution.  His practice was to sketch in the outline and general character, and then make accurate studies of the local light-and-shade, and colour.  His handling was delicate and true, and his colouring clear and harmonious.  It cannot, however, be denied, that he wants vigour and breadth; that his more poetic scenes are too light and slim;