at Alexandria, on
his way home, Wilkie complained of illness, and on shipboard, off
Gibraltar, he died, and was buried at sea. This burial is the subject of
one of Turner's pictures, and is now in the National Gallery.

The name of Landseer is an important one in British art. JOHN LANDSEER
(1761-1852) was an eminent engraver; his son THOMAS (1795-1880) followed
the profession of his father and arrived at great celebrity in it.
CHARLES, born in 1799, another son of John Landseer, became a painter and
devoted himself to a sort of historical genre line of subjects, such as
"Cromwell at the House of Sir Walter Stewart in 1651," "Surrender of
Arundel Castle in 1643," and various others of a like nature. Charles
Landseer travelled in Portugal and Brazil when a young man; he was made a
member of the Royal Academy in 1845; from 1851 to 1871 he was keeper of
the Academy, and has been an industrious and respected artist. But the
great genius of the family was:

Sir EDWIN LANDSEER (1802-1873), the youngest son of John Landseer, the
engraver. He received his first drawing lessons from his father, and from
a very early age showed a great talent for sketching and that love for the
brute creation which have been his chief characteristics as an artist. He
had the power to understand his dumb subjects as well as if they spoke
some language together, and then he had the ability to fix the meaning of
all they had told him upon his canvas, by means of the sketching lines
which gave the precise form of it all and by his finishing shades which
put in the expression. If his animals were prosperous and gladsome, he
represented their good fortune with hearty pleasure; if they were
suffering, sad, or bereaved, he painted their woes with a sympathy such as
none but a true friend can give.

When Edwin and Thomas were old enough that their father thought other
instruction than his own should be given them, he placed them with Haydon,
and in these early days the master predicted that Edwin Landseer would be
the Snyders of England. Edwin sent his first picture to the Royal Academy
when he was but thirteen years old, and during the following fifty-eight
years there were but six exhibitions to which he did not contribute. When
he began his studies at the Royal Academy he was fourteen years old, and
already famous as an animal painter. He was a bright, curly-headed, manly
lad, and the aged Fuseli, then keeper of the Academy, grew to be very fond
of hi