way. At one time we find him advertising that, besides lecturing gratis, he will lend from one shilling to six, gratis, 'to such as are in extreme need, and have not wherewithal to endeavour their subsistence, whereas week by week they may drive on some trade.' By-and-by, however, Sir Balthazar was probably more disposed to borrow than to lend. His Academy met with little support—with ridicule rather than encouragement; was indeed a total failure; and he left England for America. For some years nothing was heard of him.

In 1660, however, we find him publishing at Rotterdam 'a sommary description, manifesting that greater profits are to be done in the hott than in the cold parts of America.' This contains an account of his journey with his family to settle at Surinam. But there, it seems, he was seized by the Dutch, treated with much violence (one of his children being killed), and brought to Holland. He attempted, but in vain, to obtain redress from the States for this strange treatment of him. He probably returned to England with Charles II., for he is said to have aided in designing the triumphal arches erected at the Restoration.

Gerbier's name is attached to a long list of books and pamphlets. Some of these are of a controversial character; the author was a stout Huguenot, fond of denouncing the Pope; oftentimes alarmed at plots against himself on account of his religion, and now publishing a letter of remonstrance to his three daughters who, in opposition to his will, had entered a nunnery in Paris. Other works relate to architecture and fortifications, the languages, arts, and noble exercises taught in his Academy, or contain advice to travellers, or deal with political affairs. Mr. Pepys records in his diary, under date the 28th May 1663:—'At the Coffee House in Exchange Alley I bought a little book, Counsell to Builders, by Sir Balth. Gerbier. It is dedicated almost to all the men of any great condition in England, so that the dedications are more than the book itself; and both it and them,' the diarist adds somewhat severely, 'not worth a farthing!'

Sir Balthazar died in 1667, at Hempsted-Marshall House, which he had himself designed, the seat of Lord Craven, and was buried in the chancel of the adjoining church. Portraits of Gerbier were painted by Dobson[2]—the picture was sold for £44 at the sale of Betterton the actor—and by Vandyke. The work by Vandyke also contained portraits of Gerbier's family, and was purchased in Holland by command of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and brought to Leicester House.

For something like half-a-century after Sir Balthazar Gerbier's time we find no trace of another Art Academy in England.

VERRIO AND LAGUERRE.

ope, denouncing the vanity of wealth and the crimes committed in the name of taste, visits Lord Timon's villa, and finds plenty of pegs on which to hang criticism—ample scope for satire. With depreciating eyes he surveys the house and grounds, their fittings and garniture, almost as though he were going to make a bid for them. 'He that blames would buy,' says the proverb. Then he passes to the out-buildings, taking notes like a broker in possession under a fi. fa.

Who was Verrio? Who was Laguerre?

ANTONIO VERRIO was born in Lecce, a town in the Neapolitan province of Terra di Otranto, in the year 1639. Early in life he visited Venice to study the colouring of the Venetian masters. He returned a successful, not a meritorious painter. In 1660 he was at Naples, where he executed a large fresco work, 'Christ healing the Sick,' for the Jesuit College. This painting, we are told, was conspicuous for its brilliant colour and forcible effect.

Subsequently the artist was in France, painting the high altar of the Carmelites at Toulouse. Dominici says that 'Verrio had such a love for travelling that he could not remain in his own country.'

Charles II., desiring to revive the manufacture of tapestry at Mortlake, which had been stopped by the civil war, invited Verrio to England; but when he arrived the king changed his plans, and intrusted the painter with the decoration in fresco of Windsor Castle. Charles was induced to this by seeing a work of Verrio's at Lord Arlington's house at the end of St. James's Park, the site of Buckingham House. 'In possession of the Cartoons of Raphael,' Fuseli lectured, angrily, on the subject, years afterwards, 'and with the magnificence of Whitehall before his eyes, he suffered Verrio to contaminate the walls of his palaces.' But there was raging then a sort of epidemical belief in native deficiency and in the absolute necessity of importing art talent. In his first picture Verrio represented the king in a glorification of naval triumph. He decorated most of the ceilings of the palace, one whole side of St. George's Hall and the Chapel; but few of his works are now extant. Hans Jordaens' lively fancy and ready pencil induced his critics to affirm of him, 'that his figures seemed to flow from his hand upon the canvas as from a pot-ladle.' Certainly, from Verrio's fertility in apologue and allegory, and the rapidity of his execution, it might have been said that he spattered out his works with a mop. Nothing daunted him. He would have covered an acre of ceiling with an acre of apotheosis. As Walpole writes, 'His exuberant pencil was ready at pouring out gods, goddesses, kings, emperors, and triumphs over those public surfaces on which the eye never rests long enough to criticise, and where one should be sorry to place the works of a better master. I mean ceilings and staircases. The New Testament or the Roman History cost him nothing but ultramarine; that and marble columns and marble steps he never spared.'

He shrunk from no absurdity or incongruity. His taste was even worse than his workmanship. He delighted to avenge any wrong he had received, or fancied he had received, by introducing his enemy, real or