Now, what we contend for is—­without presuming ourselves to attempt anything like a worthy portraiture of Francis Chantrey—­that here, ready-made to the hand of any man competent to the task of illustrating a life full of instruction for the rising brotherhood of art, is a subject which it behooved the Royal institution that has so largely profited by Chantrey’s liberality and fame, not to neglect, much less throw away.  The book which we have taken for the foundation of this notice, written by a Royal Academician, is a disgrace to the Royal Academy.  Is then, we ask, no single member of that gifted body competent to say a word or two in plain English for the departed sculptor, that such a melancholy exhibition of helplessness must needs be sent forth as a tribute from excellence to excellence?  The life of Chantrey properly written could not but prove of the utmost value to Englishmen, and simply because it is the career of a man attaining the highest distinction by means thoroughly understood by his countrymen, and by the exercise of an intellect at all times under the salutary influence of a wholesale national bias.  Jones on Chantrey is Jenkins on Milton; the poet of Moses and Son upon the Inferno of Dante—­the ridiculous limping after the sublime.

The great aim of Mr. George Jones, R.A., in his present undertaking, seems to have been to exhibit his own vast erudition and his great command of the hard words of his native tongue.  Indeed, he quotes so much Greek and Latin, and talks so finely, that it is only to be regretted that he does not now and then come down from his stilts in order to gratify himself with a little intelligible English and his readers with some homely grammar.  It will be our painful duty to submit to the reader’s notice a specimen or two of Mr. Jones’ peculiar style, which, together with the profound simplicity of his original remarks, make up as curious a production as it has ever fallen to our lot to read and to criticise.

When our old friend, M. Soyer, declared his conviction that “to die is a religious duty which every human being owes to his Creator,” and that when the parents of a family are suddenly cut off, the unfortunate event “not only affects the children personally, but their future generations, by destroying all the social comfort which generally exists in such families, and probably would cause misery to exist instead of happiness,” it occurred to us that sterner truisms in more naked guise it would be difficult to produce.  We had not then read Jones. His self-evident propositions are perfectly astounding.  Here are a few of them.