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(Doblenskiy district), capital of the Government (35,011 inh.); its various qualities, in order to ship it off to their millsBauske (6543); Friedrichstadt (6800); Goldingen (9733); Grobin under the most advantageous conditions. Population (1489); Hasenpoth (3338) ; Illuxt (2340); Talsen (1485); (1880), 26,943; (1890), 30,383; (1897), 32,949. Tuckum (7542); Windau (7132). (p. A. K.) Cousins, Samuel (1801-1887), English mezzoCourtney, Leonard Henry (1832 ), English politician and man of letters, eldest son of tint engraver, was born at Exeter on 9th May 1801. Mr T. S. Courtney, a banker at Penzance, was born He was pre-eminently the interpreter of Sir Thomas at Penzance on 6th July 1832. At Cambridge he was Lawrence, his contemporary. During his apprenticeSecond Wrangler and First Smith’s Prizeman, and was ship to S. W. Reynolds he engraved many of the best elected a Fellow of his College, St John’s. He was called amongst the three hundred little mezzotints illustratto the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1858, was Professor of ing the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds which his master Political Economy at University College from 1872 to issued in his own name. In the finest of his numerous 1875, and in December 1876, after a previous unsuccessful transcripts of Lawrence, such as “Lady Acland and her attempt, was elected to Parliament for Liskeard in the Sons,” “Pope Pius VII.,” and “Master Lambton,” the: Liberal interest. He continued to represent the borough, distinguishing characteristics of the engraver’s work, the and the district into which it was merged by the Reform brilliancy and force of effect in a high key, corresponded Act of 1885, until 1900, when his differences with the exactly with similar qualities in the painter. After majority of his constituents on the South African question the introduction of steel for engraving purposes in 1823,. on which he was one of the foremost of the so-called Cousins and his contemporaries were compelled to work “Pro-Boer” party—compelled his retirement. Until 1885 on it, because the soft copper previously used for mezzohe was a devoted adherent of Mr Gladstone, particularly in tint plates did not yield a sufficient number of fine finance and foreign affairs. In 1880 he was Under Secretary impressions to enable the method to compete commercially of State for the Home Department, in 1881 for the Colonies, against line engraving, from which much larger editions and in 1882 Secretary to the Treasury; but Mr Courtney were obtainable. The painter-like quality which dishas always been a stubborn fighter for principle, and upon tinguished the 18th century mezzotints on copper was finding that the Government’s Reform Bill in 1884 con- wanting in his later works, because the hardness of the tained no recognition of the scheme for proportional repre- steel on which they were engraved impaired freedom of sentation, to which he was deeply committed, he resigned execution and richness of tone, and so enhanced the office. Mr Courtney manifested the same fidelity to his labour of scraping that he accelerated the work by stipple, convictions by refusing to support Mr Gladstone’s Home etching the details instead of scraping them out of the Rule Bill in 1885, and was one of those Liberal Unionists “ground” in the manner of his predecessors. To this who chiefly contributed to its rejection, and whose reputa- “mixed style,” previously used by Richard Earlom on tion for unbending integrity and intellectual eminence gave copper, Cousins added heavy roulette and rocking-tool solidity to the section of Liberals who followed Lord textures, tending to fortify the darks, when he found that Hartington. In 1886 Mr Courtney was elected Chairman the “burr” even on steel failed to yield enough fine of Committees in the House of Commons, and his efficiency impressions to meet the demand. The effect of his printsin this arduous office seemed to many to mark him out in this method after Reynolds and Millais was mechanical for the Speakership when a vacancy occurred in 1895. A and out of harmony with the picturesque technique of Liberal Unionist, however, could only be elected by Con- these painters, but the phenomenal popularity which servative votes, and he had made himself objectionable Cousins gained for his works at least kept alive and in to a large section of the party by his independent attitude favour a form of mezzotint engraving during a critical on various questions, on which his Liberalism outweighed phase of its history. Raimbach, the line engraver, dated his party loyalty. He would in any case have been incapaci- the decline of his own art in England from the: tated by an affection of the eyesight, which for a while appearance in 1837 of Cousins’s print (in the “mixed threatened to withdraw him from public life altogether. style ”) after Landseer’s “ Bolton Abbey.” Such plates After 1895 Mr Courtney’s divergences from the Unionist as “Miss Peel” after Lawrence (published in 1832); party on questions other than Irish politics became gradu- “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” after Landseer (1857); ally more marked. He became known in the House of “The Order of Release” and “The First Minuet,” Commons principally for his candid criticism of the measures after Millais (1854 and 1865); “The Strawberry Girl” introduced by his nominal leaders, and he was rather to be and “ Lavinia, Countess Spencer,” after Reynolds ; and ranked among the Opposition than as a Ministerialist; and “Miss Rich,” after Hogarth (1873-1877), represent various when the crisis with the Transvaal came in 1899, Mr stages of Cousins’s mixed method. It reached itsCourtney’s views, which remained substantially what they final development in the plates after Millais’s “ Cherry were when he supported the settlement after Majuba in Ripe” and “Pomona,” published in 1881 and 1882, when 1881, had plainly become incompatible with his position the invention of coating copper-plates with a film of steel even as a nominal follower of Lord Salisbury and Mr to make them yield larger editions led to the revival of Chamberlain. Besides numerous essays in the principal pure mezzotint on copper, which has since rendered reviews, Mr Courtney was the author of the article on obsolete the steel plate and the mixed style which it “ Banking ” in the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Brit- fostered. The fine draughtsmanship of Cousins was as annica, and of the survey of recent British finance in apparent in his prints as in his original lead-pencil Mr T. H. Ward’s Reign of Queen Victoria (1887). In portraits exhibited in London in 1882. In 1855 he was his earlier years he was a regular contributor to The elected a full member of the Royal Academy, to which institution he later gave in trust £15,000 to provide Times. Courtrai, a town of Belgium, in the province of annuities for superannuated artists who had not been so West Flanders, 27 miles south of Bruges by rail. The successful as himself. One of the most important figures foremost industry of the town is the manufacture of linen, in the history of British engraving, he died in London, but the trade in oil is increasing in importance. Flax is unmarried, on 7th May 1887. extensively grown in the district. All the large Ulster See George Pycroft, M.R.C.S.E. Memoir of Samuel Cousins, spinners send delegates to Courtrai, to visit the farmers R.A., Member of the Legion of Honour. Published for private and attend the marts where raw flax is to be bought in circulation by E. E. Leggatt, London, 1899.—Algernon Graves.