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DEATH OF MR. PERCY.

THIS artist, who was well known for his exquisite models in miniature size, expired suddenly, of an apoplectic fit, whilst finishing a portrait of Prince Leopold.

TRANSACTIONS AND OCCURRENCES OF ACADEMIES AND SOCIETIES CONNECTED WITH ART.

ART. XVI. ROYAL ACADEMY. Election of Two Academicians.

Ar the annual election, Messrs. ABRAHAM COOPER and WM. COLLINS, both Associates of the Academy, were elected to the rank of Royal Academicians.

FUNERAL OF THE LATE MR. WEST.

SOON after Mr. West's decease, a deputation from the Council of the Royal Academy waited on his sons to apprize them of the intention of that body to honour his remains by attending them to the grave, according to the ceremonial adopted on the public interment of the late Sir Joshua Reynolds in St. Paul's Cathedral.

The corpse was brought to the Royal Academy on Tuesday evening, received by the Council and Officers, and deposited in the Model Academy on the ground-floor, which was hung with black.

About half-past ten on Wednesday morning, the Academicians, Associates, and Students, assembled in the Great Exhibition Room, and the nobility, gentry, and the deceased's private friends, arrived shortly after. The chief mourners were in seclusion in the library of the Academy. About half-past twelve o'clock, the whole of the arrangements having been effected, the procession moved from Somerset House to St. Paul's Cathedral; it entered at the VOL. V. NO. 16.

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great western gate, and was met at the entrance of the Cathedral by the church dignitaries, &c.

Chief Mourners.

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Raphael Lamar West, Esq. Sons of the deceased.
Benjamin West, Esq.

Mr. Benjamin West, jun. Grandson.

Robert Brunning, (the old Servant of deceased :) Henry Fauntleroy, Esq., and James Henry Henderson, Esq. (the Family Trustees and Executors of deceased:)

and

The Rev. Dr. Heslop, Vicar of St. Marylebone; the Rev. Mr. Borrodaile, Chaplain to the Lord Mayor; and Joseph Hayes, Esq. Medical Attendant on deceased.

The Bishop of Salisbury,

(As Chaplain to the Royal Academy, and an Honorary

Member.)

Prince Hoare, Esq.

(Secretary for Foreign Correspondence to the Royal

Academy.)

The body of Academicians and Associates of the Royal Academy, according to seniority, as Members, two by two.

Students, two by two.

Then followed the private mourners, consisting of 56 gentlemen, among whom were Aldermen Wood and Birch; Thomas Hope, Esq.; Richard Payne Knight, Esq.; John Nash, Esq.; P. Turnerelli, Esq.; Charles Heath, Esq.;

A. Robertson, Esq.; J. Martin, Esq.; C. R. Leslie, Esq.; W. Behnes, Esq.; E. Scriven, Esq.

It being Passion week, the usual chanting and performance of music in the Cathedral service could not take place, but an anthem was, by special permission, allowed to be sung; and the Honourable and Reverend Dr. Wellesley, assisted by the Rev. the Prebendary, performed the solemn service in a very impressive manner. The body was placed in the choir, and at the head were arranged, on chairs, the chief-mourners and executors. The pall-bearers were seated on each side of the corpse, and the members of the Royal Academy and other mourners were arranged on each side of the choir. After the anthem, the body was attended to the vault-door by the pall-bearers, followed by the chief-mourners and executors, and was conveyed into the crypt, and placed immediately beneath the perforated brass plate, under the centre of the dome. Dr. Wellesley, with the other canons, and the whole choir, then came under the dome, and the pall-bearers, chief-mourners, and executors, stood by them. The members of the Royal Academy were ranged on the right, and the other mourners on the left, forming a circle, the outside of which was protected by the marshals' and undertakers' attendants. Here the remainder of the service was completed; and the sexton, placed in the crypt below, at the proper period let fall some earth, as usual, on the coffin. After the funeral service was ended, the chief-mourners and executors, accompanied by most of the other mourners, went into the crypt, and attended the corpse to its grave, which was sunk with brick-work under the pavement at the head of the grave of the late Sir Joshua Reynolds, and adjoining to that of the late Mr. West's intimate and highly valued friend, Dr. Newton, formerly Bishop of Bristol, and Dean of St. Paul's, the brick-work of whose grave forms one side of Mr. West's. Sir Christopher Wren, the architect, lies interred

close by, as well as those eminent artists, the late Mr. Opie, and Mr. Barry.

The whole of this affecting ceremony was conducted with great solemnity and respect, and was witnessed by an immense concourse of people.

Among the carriages attending in the procession were those of the Lord Mayor; the Archbishop of York; the Dukes of Norfolk, Northumberland, and Argyll; the Marquesses of Lansdown and Stafford; the Earls of Liverpool, Essex, Aberdeen, Carlisle, Dartmouth, Powis, Mulgrave, Darnley, and Carysfort; Viscount Sidmouth; the Bishops of London, Salisbury, Carlisle, and Chester; Admiral Lord Radstock; Sir William Scott; the American Ambassador &c. &c. &c.

ELECTION OF A NEW PRESIDENT.

Ar a general meeting of the Academicians, Sir THOMAS LAWRENCE was elected President of the Royal Academy in the room of the late BENJAMIN WEST, Esq.

ART. XVII. Lectures on Architecture. By JOHN SOANE, Esq.

MR. SOANE commenced his usual course of lectures on Architecture, on Thursday, February 24, 1820. He began by observing, that among the Fine Arts, Architecture had ever held an exalted rank, and a pre-eminence over the other arts of design; and that the same concession must ever be made to it, when we consider the beauty and effect of ancient and modern structures, either from an actual investigation, or through the medium of correct graphical delineations.

The Professor remarked, that, at the present day, those who have been prevented by circumstances from visiting

Greece or Rome, have their path smoothed, and many of their difficulties cleared away, by the careful investigations and accurate delineations contained in some of our late works on the architecture of Greece and Italy. Among others, Stuart and Revett well know how to estimate the beauties of chaste architecture, and with a laudable zeal braved every danger that opposed their love of art. They made the works of the Greeks known to their countrymen, who soon saw the superior excellence of these chaste specimens: many, however, had imbibed early prejudices, which were not to be easily eradicated: they looked at Grecian architecture as an innovation, and did their utmost to decry its excellencies. "The far-famed Temple of Minerva Parthenon," says a writer of the time, "built by the united labour of Phidias, Ictinus and Callicrates, and at the joint expense of all Greece, was not so considerable either in altitude or extent, as the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, exclusive of the spire." The falsity of this assertion, said the Professor, may be immediately shown by a comparison of the two edifices.

Some writers have not hesitated to attribute to the Greeks a want of proper feeling for the beautiful in architecture, calling their Doric columns gouty, and ascribing their narrow intercolumniations to a deficiency in their knowledge of construction: to the same cause have their hypethral temples also, and those with a single row of columns up the middle, been attributed but we know that the Greeks in their temples to Jupiter, conceiving it improper to confine that deity under a roof, always built in the hypethral manner; while those with a range of columns in the centre were intended for the worship of more than one deity in the same temple. The first of these observations, said Mr. Soane, can only apply to the Doric order, in the proportions of which the varieties are infinite. The Greeks used a more manly