Royal Society, 525 



Ills age who was equally learned on all subjects connected with the 

 history and literature of astronomy*. 



Professor Rigaud was a man of most amiable character, and of 

 singularly pleasing manners and person. The warmth of his affec- 

 tions, his modesty, gentleness, and love of truth, as well as the great 

 variety of his acquirements and accomplishments, had secured him 

 the love and the respect of a large circle of friends, not merely in 

 his own university, but amongst men of science generally. He died 

 in London in March last, after a short but painful illness, which 

 he bore with a fortitude and resignation which might have been 

 expected from his gentle, patient, and truly Christian character. 



Mr. Wilkins, Professor of Architecture to the Royal Academy, 

 became a member of Caius College, Cambridge, in 1796, and took 

 the degree of B.A. in 1800, his name standing sixth on the mathe- 

 matical Tripos. He was soon afterwards nominated one of Wort's 

 Travelling Bachelors, and also a fellow of his college, and passed four 

 years in Greece and Italy, studying the architectural remains and 

 monuments of those countries with great diligence, preparatory to the 

 practice of his profession as an architect, which his father had followed 

 with credit, and for which his great skill as a draftsman particularly 

 qualified him. The study of those matchless creations of ancient art 

 would appear to have exercised a powerful influence on his taste, and 

 to have led him to prefer the purer forms of Grecian architecture 

 to the more varied imitations and adaptations of them -which ap- 

 peared in the works of the Romans or in those of the great masters 

 of modern Italy and more particularly of Palladio ; — and the influ- 

 ence of these predilections was sufficiently visible in his designs for 

 the East India College at Haileybury, and for Downing College, Cam- 

 bridge, and is more or less easily traceable in most of his subsequent 

 works. In 1807, he published his "Antiquities of Magna Graecia," 

 a magnificent work, containing descriptions, views, measurements, 

 and restorations of the chief remains of Syracuse, Agrigentum, 

 iEgesta, and Paestuni. At a subsequent period he published "Athe- 

 niensia," or Remarks on the Buildings of Athens, in which he ex- 

 pressed opinions unfavourable to those commonly entertained re- 

 specting the rank which the Elgin marbles, which had been only 

 recently purchased by the nation, should be considered to hold 

 when viewed as works of art : he was likewise the author of a trans- 

 lation of the Civil Architecture of Vitruvius, including those books 

 ivliich relate to the public and private edifices of the Ancients, 

 which was preceded by a learned introduction on the history of the 

 Rise and Progress of Grecian Architecture, — a work which was 

 chiefly designed to show that the precepts of Vitruvius referred to 

 Grecian and not to Roman buildings. 



The publication of these works and of some essays in the Ar- 

 chasologia, which showed a profound knowledge of the principles 

 both of Grecian and Gothic architecture, led to very extensive 



[* Some particulars of the life of Dr. Halley, collected by Prof, Rigaud, 

 will be fouiid in L. and E. Phil. Mag., vol. vi. p, 30G ; and other commu- 

 nications by him in vol. vjii.— Edit.] 



