Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/758

 Just in time to see the torn mantle and the lioness in the distance, concluded that Thisbe had been devoured by the wild beast. In his despair he killed himself with his sword. When Thisbe emerged from her hiding-place, and found Pyramus lying dead, she stabbed herself with the same weapon. They were buried together.

THORNEYCROFT, MARY, an adept in a branch of art, but seldom adopted as a profession by a female, is the daughter as well as wife of a sculptor. She was born in 1814, at Thornham, in Norfolk, and from a very early age found her childish pleasure and amusement in the studio of her father, Mr. John Francis, who, towards the middle period of life had determined to cultivate his taste for modelling and sculpture; and had settled in London for greater facility of studying and turning his knowledge and skill to account. His little girl was constantly employed, to the neglect of all feminine pursuits and occupations, in making up clay figures, and this practice, called by many of her friends "waste of time," gave her extraordinary facility in the plastic art. At an early age she became an exhibitor of busts and heads at the Royal Academy, and produced two noble compositions, Penelope, and Ulysses and his Dog. The first of her works which attracted much public attention was a life-size figure called the Flower-Girl. Mr. Thorneycroft was a pupil of her father's, and it was quite natural that a similarity of tastes and pursuits should lead to an attachment between the young people, which ended in their marriage in 1840. Two years after they went on a professional tour through Italy, and during a winter spent in Rome, made the acquaintance of Thorwaldsen and Gibson, from whom they derived much encouragement and advantage; the latter of these artists received so favourable an impression of Mrs. Thorneycroft's skill and judgment from models of a Sappho and Sleeping Child, which she made at Rome, that when afterwards requested by the Queen of England to name the person best qualified to model portraits of the royal children, he unhesitatingly referred to her. On her return to England in 1843, she accordingly received a commission to execute a statue of the Princess Alice, which she did so satisfactorily, that statues of the other children were at once ordered. In childish, and especially female figures, this artist is generally acknowledged to excel the most; the instincts of the woman and the mother are called into play, and under their guiding influence her hand seems to give life and motion to the marble. Her latest and perhaps most natural production is a Girl Skipping, shown at the Paris Exhibition in 1856; it is full of grace and elegance; a faithful transcript from nature.

THYNNE, FRANCES, DUCHESS OF SOMERSET, born near the close of the eighteenth century. Walpole says of her, "she had as much taste for the writings of others as modes, about her own," and might have obtained fame for her talents, had not her retiring disposition and affectionate piety led her to prefer the society of well-chosen friends, to the applause of the world. Her attainments were considerable, which she employed in the careful education of her children, the charge of whom, and devoted