653 



WESTMACOTT, RICHARD, R.A. 



WEYER, SYLVAIN VAN DE. 



654 



tion,' &o. He also executed several important works in alto and bas- 

 relief ; one of the first of which was probably his portion of the frieze 

 on the Marble Arch (now at Cumberland Gate), the sculptors of other 

 portions being Flaxman and Baily. His latest work in this stylo 

 was the pediment of the British Museum. He also executed for the 

 late Earl of Egremont, a large alto-rilievo in marble of the ' Death of 

 Horace ' for the gallery at Petworth. A large portion of his time was 

 however occupied, and much of his reputation now rests, on public 

 monumental statues. Of these it will suffice to mention his statues of 

 Pitt, Fox, Spencer Perceval, and Addison (1809), which, with his 

 monuments of the Due de Montpensier, and Mrs. Warren and her 

 Child, are in Westminster Abbey ; Sir Ralph Abercroinby, Lord 

 Collingwood, and Generals Pakenham and Gibbs, in St. Paul's Cathe- 

 dral ; Lord Erskine in the Old Hall of Lincoln's Inn Fox in Blooms- 

 bury-square ; Francis, Duke of Bedford, in Russell- square; and the 

 Duke of York on the column at Waterloo-place. The so-called 

 'Achilles,' copied from the statue at Monte Cavallo, Rome, and 

 inscribed by the Women of England to the Duke of Wellington, was 

 modelled by Westmacott, but whether the choice of the figure is to be 

 laid to the charge of his taste, or that of the women of England, we do 

 not know. 



Westmacott was elected A.R.A. in 1805, and R.A. in 1816. In 

 1827 he succeeded Flaxman as Professor of Sculpture at the Royal 

 Academy, which office he held till his death. He was a man of exten- 

 sive reading and sound judgment, and his lectures were marked by 

 these qualities, and by the absence of pretension. Shortly after her 

 accession to the throne, her Majesty conferred on him the honour of 

 knighthood. He died on the 1st of September 1856. 



* WESTMACOTT, RICHARD, R.A., son of the preceding, was born 

 in London in 1799. He studied under his father, and in 1820 pro- 

 ceeded to Italy, where he remained six years diligently occupied in 

 studying the remains of Greek and Roman art, and investigating their 

 history. The works of Mr. Westmacott are in many respects not 

 unlike those of his father ; graceful and tender in conception, with 

 something of classic severity in the style, and never failing purity of 

 feeling, but his genius is of a graver character, and he excels in 

 monumental and devotional subjects, and in fancies of a thoughtful 

 and reflective cast. He is especially happy in the treatment of rilievi. 

 Among his classical and academic works may be noticed his rilievi of 

 ' Venus and Ascanius,' and ' Venus instructing Cupid,' executed for the 

 Earl of Ellesmere; a seated statue of the 'Cymbal Player,' the pro- 

 perty of the Duke of Devonshire ; ' Venus carrying Cupid ; ' the 

 Btatue of 'Ariel;' 'Paolo and Francesco,' an admirable bas-relief exe- 

 cuted for the Marquis of Lansdowne. More original in style are bis 

 charming fantasies the 'Bluebell' and the ' Butterfly,' two exquisite 

 bas-reliefs executed for the Earl of Ellesmere (1836-38). As examples 

 of his monumental works, we may instance his recumbent figure of 

 the Archbishop of Canterbury, in Canterbury Cathedral, and that 

 of Earl Hardwicke at Wimpole ; and the Ashburton monument, and 

 especially the grand figure of the ' Angel Watching.' Of his religious 

 works we may mention the fine statue of ' David as the Slayer of 

 Goliath;' 'Prayer and Resignation ;' and the bas-relief 'Go and Sin 

 no More.' Of late years Mr. Westmacott has been chiefly occupied in 

 the execution of monumental and portrait sculpture. His busts are 

 very numerous, and include those of Lord John Russell, Sir Francis 

 Burdett, Sydney Smith, Sir R. Murchison, and other celebrated per- 

 sonages ; but he is perhaps most successful in female busts. The 

 pediment of the Royal Exchange is from his chisel. Mr. Westmacott 

 is also distinguished for his literary attainments. He has contributed 

 several valuable papers to various serial publications, among others, 

 the articles ' Sculpture ' to the ' Penny Cyclopaedia,' and to the ' Ency- 

 clopaedia Metropolitana ; ' and he has delivered courses of lectures on 

 the history and principles of Sculpture at the Royal and London 

 Institutions. He was elected F.R.S. in 1837; A.R.A. in 1838 ; R.A. in 

 1849 ; and to succeed his father as Professor of Sculpture in July 1857. 



WESTMORLAND, MILDMAY FANE, SECOND EARL OF, was 

 born about the year 1600. He was one of the Knights of the Bath at 

 the coronation of Charles I., and at the breaking out of the civil war 

 he ranged himself under the Royal banner ; but in 1643 (according to 

 Whitelocke's ' Memorials ') he " came into parliament, along -with 

 divers other delinquents, desiring the benefit of the declaration of 

 both kingdoms for composition : " he subsequently took the parlia- 

 mentary oath. Concurring however in the restoration of the monarchy, 

 he was taken into the favour of Charles II., and appointed joint lord- 

 lieutenant of Northamptonshire. His name is best known as the 

 author of a scarce volume of poems of more than ordinary merit, 

 printed only for private circulation in 1648, and entitled ' Otia Sacra.' 

 He died in 1665. The family of Fane, we should add, is descended 

 from a common ancestor with the Vanes of Cleveland, namely, Howell 

 ap Vane, who held landed property in Monmouthshire before the 

 Norman Conquest. 



* WESTMORLAND, JOHN FANE, ELEVENTH EARL OF, and a 

 general in the army, is the eldest and only surviving son of the tenth 

 earl by his first wife, the daughter and heiress of Robert Child, Esq., 

 banker, of Osterley Park, Middlesex. He was born in 1784, and was 

 educated at Westminster School. Entering the army in 1803, he 

 served as aide-de-camp to the late Sir A. Don in the expedition to 

 Hanover of 1805-6. He subsequently served in Sicily, the Darda- 



nelles, Egypt, and the Peninsula, where he was aide-de-camp to the 

 Duke of Wellington. Having served through a great part of the cam- 

 paigns of Spain and Portugal, he accompanied the Allied Armies in 

 Germany as military commissioner in 1813, and in the following year 

 became envoy at the court of Florence. In 1815, whilst still bearing 

 the courtesy title of Lord Burghersh, ho accompanied the Austrian 

 army in the campaign which ended in the restoration of the Bourbons 

 to the throne of the Two Sicilies ; he was also for some years British 

 minister at the court of Tuscany. In 1841 he succeeded to his father's 

 title, and was appointed ambassador at the court of Berlin, and held 

 that post for ten years. In 1851 he was sent to succeed the late Lord 

 Ponsonby as ambassador at Vienna, and in that capacity acted on the 

 part of the British government in the discussion of the complicated 

 Eastern question, out of which the Russian war arose. He retained 

 this position down to the year 1855, when Lord John Russell was 

 sent to Vienna on a special mission to co-operate with him in the 

 Vienna Congress. In December 1855 he returned home, being 

 replaced in his diplomatic post by Sir G. Hamilton Seymour. Besides 

 being a soldier and a diplomatist, Lord Westmorland bears the 

 reputation of being a distinguished musician, and has of late years 

 taken the greatest interest in the Concerts of Ancient Music. He has 

 received at various times the foreign orders of Maria Theresa, San 

 Ferdinand, San Josef of Austria, and of Henry the Lion of Bruns- 

 wick; he is also a Knight Grand Cross of the Bath in England, a 

 member of her Majesty's Privy Council, and colonel of the 56th 

 regiment of Foot. He married in 1811 a daughter of Lord Mary- 

 borough, afterwards third Earl of Mornington, by whom he has two 

 daughters and two surviving sons, the elder of whom, Lord Burghersh, 

 was aide-de-camp to the late Lord Raglan in the Crimea, and is now 

 captain in the Coldstream Guards and a Companion of the Bath. 



WETSTEIN, JOHN JAMES, distinguished for his labours on the 

 text of the Greek New Testament, was descended from a family which 

 had long been one of distinction in the city of Basel. His grandfather, 

 John Rudolph Wetstein, who was born in 1614 and died in 1684, was 

 professor of Greek, and afterwards of divinity, in the university there, 

 as was also one of his sons of the same names, who was born in 1647 

 and died in 1711. Another son, Henry, was the well-known learned 

 Dutch printer, and died in 1726. Rudolph, a son of the second John 

 Rudolph, was professor of divinity at Basel; and John Henry, another 

 son, became a bookseller at Amsterdam. 



The subject of the present notice was born at Basel in 1693. After 

 having studied divinity under his uncle the professor, and Hebrew 

 under Buxtorf, he was admitted a minister of the national church in 

 1713, on which occasion he printed a Latin thesis in defence of the 

 substantial genuineness and authenticity of the commonly received 

 text of the Greek Scriptures, under the title of ' Dissertatio de Variis 

 Novi Testament! Lectionibus,' 4to. To this subject he may be said to 

 have thenceforth devoted his life. He commenced by visiting France 

 and England, as well as the various libraries in Holland, for the 

 examination of manuscripts; he was in England in 1716, and again in 

 1720, and he appears to have been employed for some years in this 

 work by Bentley, who had himself printed a new edition of the Greek 

 Testament (see Life, by Monk, pp. 311 and 429). It was not till 1730 

 that Wetstein produced his next publication, a quarto volume of 

 'Prolegomena' to a proposed new edition of the Greek text according 

 to the most ancient codices. By this time however his critical investi- 

 gations had alarmed a party among his clerical brethren, who had 

 influence enough not only to obtain a decree from the senate of Basel 

 condemning his project as both unnecessary and dangerous, but even 

 to get him prohibited from officiating as a minister. On this he 

 retired to Amsterdam, where the Remonstrants or Arminians 

 appointed him successor to Le Clerc in the professorship of philo- 

 sophy and history ; and although, on his making a public apology 

 for some opinions savouring of Socinianism that had been ascribed to 

 him, the decree of the Basel senate was reversed in May 1733, he 

 resided at Amsterdam for the rest of his life, and died there on the 

 24th of March 1754. He had meanwhile paid another visit to England 

 in 1746. His edition of the Greek New Testament appeared at last, 

 'at Amsterdam, in 2 vols. folio, in 1751 and 1752. Notwithstanding 

 many errors by which it is disfigured, this edition (now become very 

 scarce) is of great value for the purposes of the critical student. The 

 first volume of an intended reprint of it, in 4to, corrected and 

 improved, appeared at Rotterdam in 1831, under the care of the 

 learned J. A. Lotze; but his death prevented its being continued. 

 The portion published contained only the Prolegomena. There is 

 also a previous republication of the Prolegomena at Halle, hi 1764, 

 under the care of Dr. John Solomon Semler. Two epistles attributed 

 to Clemens Roman us, which Wetstein had printed at the end of his 

 New Testament, from a Syriac manuscript, have been proved by 

 Lardner to be spurious. 



* WEYER, SYLVAIN VAN DE, a distinguished Belgian writer and 

 statesman, well known in English society, was born at Louvain in 1803, 

 the son of a commissary of police. He studied at the university of 

 his native town, and afterwards became a member of the Brussels bar, 

 but at an early age was named librarian of the city of Brussels, and 

 devoted himself chiefly to literary pursuits. In 1825 he published at 

 Louvain an edition of the philosophical works of Francis Hemsterhuys, 

 the son of Tiberius Hemsterhuys, the eminent classical scholar, both 



