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Flaxman and travelled to England without any such molestation as they apprehended from the disturbed state of the continent. They established themselves in a house in Buckingham Street, Fitzroy Square, where Flaxman continued to live until his death. A son of Hayley's, who showed some talent for art, was placed with him as a pupil, but within a few years died of a decline, and is commemorated by a small memorial relief, in Flaxman's best manner, in Eartham Church. From the date of his return, commissions for memorial sculptures, both public and private, brought Flaxman employment and reward more than sufficient for his modest desires and frugal way of living. In the most lucrative branch of his profession, the production of ordinary busts and portrait statues, he found comparatively little employment, the strength of his art not lying in individuality of likeness and character. Among the best of his emblematic groups in memory of private persons, executed during the years following his return from Rome, were those to Miss Emily Mawley, for Chertsey Church (model exhibited 1797); to Miss Lushington, for Lewisham; to Miss Cromwell, for Chichester, 1800; and to Mrs. Knight, for Milton Church, Cambridge, 1802. Among public monuments he exhibited in 1796 the model of that to Lord Mansfield for Westminster Abbey, and in 1798 of that to Corsican Paoli for the same place. Through Mrs. Hare Naylor he obtained the commission for a monument to Sir William Jones (her brother-in-law) for St. Mary's, Oxford (the model exhibited 1797; the finished portrait statue, 1801), and afterwards executed another for University College, Oxford. These commissions led the way to an Indian connection, and Flaxman afterwards carried out several monumental works for the East India Company and one for the rajah of Tanjore. In 1800 he showed a design for a monument to a Captain Dundas, and in 1802 that for the monument of Captain Montagu in Westminster Abbey. In the meantime he had in 1797 been elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and a full member in 1800, in which year was exhibited his diploma work, a marble relief of ‘Apollo and Marpessa.’

There remain evidences of Flaxman's industry in other forms during these years. It was his yearly habit to give his wife on her birthday a drawing of their friend Stothard. In 1796 he gave her instead, with a charming dedication, a set of forty outline drawings of his own in illustration of a little allegorical poem he had written in blank verse, called ‘The Knight of the Blazing Cross’ (this volume is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge). In 1797 he published in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ a letter to the president and council of the Royal Academy, deprecating, with more point and vigour of style than are shown in any other of his writings, the scheme of the French government for ransacking Italy of its art treasures and bringing them to Paris. The progress of the war with France fired his patriotism, and in 1800 he addressed a pamphlet to the committee then considering the proposal to erect a great naval pillar in honour of British arms. Flaxman urged in opposition the erection of a colossal statue of Britannia triumphant, two hundred feet high, on Greenwich Hill. The next year he exhibited his sketch model for such a monument, and was somewhat wounded at the indifference with which his project was received. About the same time he published another letter to the president and council of the Royal Academy on the encouragement of the arts in England. In 1802 the act of rapine against which he pleaded five years before had been accomplished, and the peace of Amiens brought all Europe to Paris to gaze on the spoils of Italy there assembled. Flaxman, notwithstanding his disapproval, went too, but stiffly declined all interchange of courtesies with the French artists and others who had been instrumental in the spoliation.

After 1802 the tenor of Flaxman's life continued with little change until 1810, when he was appointed to the newly created post of professor of sculpture in the academy. Not only his fame as an artist, but particularly his assiduity and popularity as a teacher in the academy schools, recommended him to this post. Simplicity and earnestness of manner are said to have been his chief characteristics as a lecturer. ‘The Rev. John Flaxman’ he was once styled by the obstreperous Fuseli in the act of leaving a jovial party to go and hear him. His lectures in their published form show no power of style, and not much of order or arrangement, and on points of scholarship and archæology are now quite without authority; they are at the same time distinguished for sound sense and native insight into the principles and virtues alike of Greek and Gothic art. Among the chief works of sculpture which occupied Flaxman in the years preceding and following his appointment as academy professor were the beautiful and elaborate monument in relief for the Baring family in Micheldever Church, Hampshire, of which the various parts were exhibited at intervals between 1805 and 1811; the monument, only less rich, for the Yarborough family at Campsall Church, Yorkshire; a model for a monument to Sir Joshua