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a spirited historical painting, representing Van Biebeck founding 
the Cape Colony in 1650. 
Wood carving next came in for attention during some of C. D. 
Bell’s spare hours ; also modelling in clay ; such models, after 
baking in an oven, being then painted in natural colours. Bor the 
object of most of these artistic works “ in the round” was to pre- 
serve the physiognomy, manners, customs, tastes, and traditions of 
the native races of South Africa. He had enjoyed the opportunity of 
seeing those races on his first arrival in their country, still numerous, 
distinctive, and true in their stationary savagedom to a long past 
antiquity ; but before he left, they were rapidly losing, under new 
conditions, those characteristic features, as well as their ancient, 
imperfect mother tongues. 
Such then was the man, Charles D. Bell, who, leaving most of 
those precious works behind him, or having given them away right 
and left too generously as soon as completed, returned to this country 
in 1874, with his second wife (a Cape lady), two sons, and a 
daughter. Giving vent immediately to his long pent-up passionate 
admiration for his native land, he soon joined the Antiquaries and 
the Meteorological Societies, as well as our own ; wrote on the 
ancient harps of Scotland, and began to illustrate in painting some 
of the touching ballads of the country’s former days. But his 
existence was saddened by the quickly following deaths of mother, 
father, and uncle. Then he suddenly lost the use of one eye. 
Without external change, or internal feel, the sight power was gone. 
He had always been very short of sight, however keen ; and it was 
that eye, whose surrounding muscular contractions had enabled him 
to keep a strong concave lens always in place through fifty years of 
excellent work, which had now suddenly broken down. 
But most of all was he affected by the sudden and totally unex- 
pected demise at Crail, during a summer residence there last year, 
in his father’s old house, of his beloved Wife. His faithful spirit 
never recovered that blow, and he but lingered on for some six 
months further, until he followed her himself. 
I cannot expect that, with my imperfect knowledge of his most 
multifarious life, I have in any way succeeded in representing it as 
it so fully deserves to be represented, in all its noble character and 
just proportions. Hor is there, perhaps, the most pressing of all 
