Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/26

 three days before his death, he sat bolstered up in bed, and touched it over and over with the choicest colors, in his happiest style; then held it off at arms' length, exclaiming, "There! that will do! I cannot mend it." Observing his wife in tears, he said, "Stay, Kate! keep just as you are; I will draw your portrait, for you have been an angel to me." She obeyed, and the dying artist made a fine likeness. He was cheerful and contented to the last. "I glory," said he, "in dying, and have no grief but in leaving you, Katharine; we have lived happy and we have lived long; we have ever been together, but we shall be divided soon. Why should I fear death! Nor do I fear it. I have endeavored to live as Christ commands, and have sought to worship God truly." On the day of his death, Aug. 12, 1827, he composed and sung hymns to his Maker, so sweetly to the ear of his beloved Katharine, that she stood wrapt to hear him. Observing this, he said to her, with looks of intense affection, "My beloved, they are not mine—no, they are the songs of the angels."

Young Proctor, the sculptor, was a student of the rarest promise, in the Royal Academy. After obtaining two silver medals, the president, Benjamin West, had the suggestion conveyed to him, that he had better execute a historical composition. Accordingly, in the next year, Proctor produced his model of "Ixion on the Wheel," and in the following year, "Pirithous slain by Cerberus," both of which