290 
An avlemoriam. 
J. E. Nicgutrneare, F.S.A. 
INCE the issue of the last number of the Magazine the 
Society has suffered a severe loss in the death, on February 
22nd, 1892, of James Edward Nightingale, F.S.A., at the age of 75. 
A frequent and most valued contributor to the Magazine, and, with 
his sister, a most regular attendant at the Annual Meetings of the 
Society, he was recognised as an authority to be safely appealed to 
on all matters of architecture or art. But still, he was so retiring 
by nature, and had such a horror of putting himself forward in any 
way, that—except with those who knew him well, or who were 
themselves interested in the subjects he had made his own—his 
wide and varied knowledge scarcely received the recognition which 
it certainly deserved. In Wiltshire, perhaps, he will be chiefly 
remembered as the historian of the Church plate of the counties of 
Wilts and Dorset, a work which he undertook at the instance of the 
present , Bishop of Salisbury, and on which he was continuously 
engaged for some five years before his death. The volume on the 
Dorset plate was issued in 1889; the larger and fuller account of 
the Wiltshire plate was not yet published at the time of his death— 
an early specimen copy which had been sent him during the last 
week of his life lying amongst the wreaths of flowers on his coffin 
in the room at Wilton in whieh he had worked for so many years. 
Perhaps with a feeling that his days were numbered—though his 
actual illness only lasted a week—he had been intensely anxious of 
late to complete this work without delay, and he did finish it, only 
a few weeks before his death. 
He had, however, none of the narrowness of the specialist about 
him, and before he devoted himself to the subject of Church plate 
he had made deep researches into the history of the various manu- 
factures of English china, and had made himself a name as one of 
