countant churchwarden of St. Michael's parish, by the unanimous vote of the vestry, but against his own wish. However, having been elected, he determined to improve the condition of the church, and commenced by having the edifice thoroughly cleaned, and the monuments repaired. He removed the square-paned glass in some of the windows, and substituted quarries of the ancient form; and he also presented some stained glass in his possession, which was placed in one of the north clerestory windows. He completed the repairs to the roof of the Lady's Chapel, and restored its ancient decorations; and, under his superintendence, three open screens were formed of portions of old oak carving, found in various parts of the church, which were placed at the back of the fine ancient stalls, and are now seen to much advantage in conse quence of the repewing of the church with open seats, and the removal of the galleries. He also replaced the lightning-conductor (which had been taken down and forgot. ten in 1818), and had the summit of the spire repaired, and the weathercock taken down, enlarged, and regilt. He caused several of the charities to be inscribed on four boards of large size, with the churchwardens' names attached, which, with the previous ones, contained all that belonged to the church, so that the parishioners might be aware of the benefactions belonging to them, and had them placed in conspicuous situations. Many abuses existed in the distribution of these charities, which he thoroughly investigated and removed; and through his exertions a legacy of 3007., left by Mrs. Ann Yardley to the poor of Coventry some years before, but never received, was recovered. For the information he gave respecting the charities of Coventry, Mr. Reader received the thanks of the Charity Commissioners; and his services as accountant churchwarden, in maintaining the structure of the church, received the special thanks of Mr. Archdeacon Spooner.

In 1815 he published a Description of the Churches of St. Michael and the Holy Trinity, Coventry, with Inscriptions from the Monuments, &c. and a List of Benefactions. 8vo. pp. 56.

In 1816, The Charter granted by King James the First to the Mayor, Bailiffs, and Commonalty of the City of Coventry in 1621, from the Latin Record in the Chapel of the Rolls, London. Two 8vo. pamphlets of 32 pages each, original Latin, and Translation.

In 1827, A Guide to St. Mary's Hall, Coventry. 12mo. pp. 48.

The History of Leofric Earl of Mercia, and his Countess Godiva, from authentic

records, with the Origin and Description of Coventry Show Fair, &c. 1827. 18mo. A second edition, 1830, 12mo. Third edition, 8vo. 1834.

Description of St. Michael's Church, Coventry, with Inscriptions from all the Monuments, &c. a List of the Vicars from 1242 and Churchwardens from 1563, and Details of all the Charities belonging to the Parish. 1830. 12mo. pp. 86.

Persecutions at Coventry by the Roman Catholics, from 1380 to 1557. 1829. 8vo. pp. 16.

A List of the Bailiffs of Coventry, from 1264 to 1449; the Sheriffs, from 1450 to 1830; the Mayors, from 1345 to 1830.

An Authentic Account of the Lammas Grounds belonging to the City of Coventry, from an original record by Humphrey Wanley, in the British Museum. 1810. 12mo. pp. 12.

The Boundaries of St. Michael's Parish, Coventry. 12mo. pp. 12. 1821.

Domesday Book for the County of Warwick. Translated by W. Reader. With a brief Dissertation on Domesday Book, and Biographical Notices of the Ancient Possessors. 1835. 4to. pp. 124. The original and the translation are printed in parallel pages.

Mr. Reader published in the Coventry Mercury Newspaper, of which he was editor and half proprietor, many articles on the ancient and modern history of the city. He was an occasional correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine from 1809 to 1852, and he also made some contributions to the Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica.

He devoted his leisure for many years to the collection of manuscripts, engravings, coins, &c. illustrative of the history and antiquities of the city of Coventry, and the county of Warwick: his Coventry MSS. especially are voluminous and valuable, as he never lost any opportunity of increasing the store which his influential position in the city afforded him.

He enjoyed the friendship and respect of many distinguished antiquaries, among whom may be mentioned his earliest acquaintances, Mr. John Nickson (died June 16, 1830, aged 70), and Mr. Thomas Sharp (died Aug. 12, 1841, aged 70), both of Coventry; and Wm. Hamper, esq. F.S.A. of Birmingham.

He also made valuable communications to Sir Henry Ellis, for Dugdale's Monasticon; to Mr. Beasley for the History of Banbury; and more recently to the Rev. Joseph Hunter for his Illustrations of Shakespeare; Mr. Way, Mr. Halliwell, &c.

After the death of his partner Mr. Rollason in 1813, Mr. Reader continued to manage the business, in part for the

benefit of his widow, who was left with a young family; but times were eventually less propitious; and, from the potent rivalry of other newspapers, and an accumulation of bad debts, he was at the close of 1833 forced to relinquish the business; and in 1835, having parted with the greater part of considerable freehold property which he had possessed in Coventry and its neighbourhood, he was compelled to leave that ancient city for the welfare of which he had sacrificed so much of his valuable time-to return no more. He at first removed to Birmingham, where he lost the remainder of his property, and endured much adversity; and in May 1837 he finally settled in London, where he has passed his declining years in mingled toil and trouble, although alleviated by recollections of the "glories of the past,' and the approval and consolation of a pure conscience, and of an unsullied and spotless name.

Mr. Reader married, May 9, 1815, Elizabeth, the only child of Mr. William Hadley, miller, of Stivichall and Coventry, and had a family of three sons (William, Charles, and Henry) and four daughters (Harriet, Elizabeth, Mary, and Louisa), of whom his widow and two eldest sons alone survive. His body was interred on Monday, Oct. 11, at St. John's, Hoxton.

MR. JOHN JUST.

Oct. 14. In his 54th year, Mr. John Just, the Second Master of the Grammar School at Bury in Lancashire, and the lecturer on botany at the Pine-street School of Medicine in Manchester.

The attainments of Mr. Just, which were very extensive, and of no common order, and his literary contributions on botany and agriculture, antiquities and philology, call for something more, in speaking of his decease, than a mere mention of his name, and the number of years he lived.

Mr. Just was a native of the village of Natland, in Westmerland. The North of England has long been noted for sending forth, from time to time, men of quick penetration and close research, who, by the force of a clear intellect and steady industry, have raised themselves above the condition of their birth, and obtained, through their own merits, that precedence among their competitors to which, by their labours and abilities, they have shown themselves fairly entitled. From early life Mr. Just was engaged in the duties of teaching, as a means of support; and hence all his own acquirements of knowledge had to be gained by devoting the early hours of the morning to study for

his own improvement, while the rest of the day was spent in instructing the junior classes of a school. In this way he was employed for some years as assistant master in the Grammar School of Kirby Lonsdale, before he came to reside in Bury. If his circumstances, or the help of friends, had given him at this period of his life the means of pursuing those studies, for which he had so great a taste and aptitude, with the advantages, in due course, of a university education, he would have been not unlikely to have gone on in the same career of distinction with some of those painstaking scholars of the North, who, like a Sedgwick or a Whewell, have gained for themselves the highest distinction for their contributions both to literature and to science. As it was, amidst the disadvantages of unceasing engagements, Mr. Just, by a wise economy of time, made himself a good Latin, Greek, and Hebrew scholar, to which he afterwards added a sufficient knowledge of modern languages-French, German, and Italian-to enable him to read any author in those languages with whose writings he wished to become acquainted. A desire of studying the formation of the English language, and of tracing the origin of some of the peculiar expressions used in the North of England, had led Mr. Just to pay particular attention to the AngloSaxon language, and to the intermixture with it in his own, and some of the adjoining counties, of many Danish terms; and he had made great preparations in forming a glossary of this parent stock of the English tongue, in which he was busied not many weeks before his deathas long, indeed, as he was able to work with his pen.

Nor was Mr. Just less diligent or less successful in scientific pursuits than in the acquirement of languages. He was well versed in mathematics; and in natural philosophy there was scarcely any branch of science that he had not thoroughly studied, both practically and theoretically. He was well acquainted with chemistry, and had paid much attention to the application of it to agricultural purposes. His knowledge of plants was, perhaps, superior to that of any person residing in his part of the country, and was continually enlarged by his fondness for botanical pursuits, and by his diligence in collecting and arranging specimens, both for his own use and for the pupils who attended his annual course of lectures.

At a later period of life archæology was also a pursuit in which Mr. Just took much interest. His skill in deciphering the Runic inscriptions found on old crosses and tombstones brought him into commu

nication with some friends who were interested in the same researches, and by this means he was led to pay much attention to these primitive records of our forefathers, for the explanation of which his study of the early language of this country had, in a great measure, prepared his way. Mr. Just had also carefully investigated the Roman roads in the county of Lancaster, to which his attention had been drawn by observing the traces of them very near the two places in which he spent the first and latter part of his life-Bury and Kirby Lonsdale. The information he had thus collected brought him in connection with the officers of the Ordnance service, while they were engaged in the survey of the county. This gave him an opportunity of more fully verifying the conclusions he had formed; and hence the essay he published to illustrate the 10th Iter of Antoninus, which proceeds from Manchester, by Bury parish, to Ribchester, not only gives the information of an accurate scholar drawn from books, but the testimony of an observer who had traversed the whole road, measured its distances, and carefully traced out its entire course. Besides the above essay Mr. Just sent other contributions, at different times, to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, of which he was a corresponding member, and which have been published in their Memoirs-two on Anglo-Saxon Roots of Words, and AngloSaxon Patronymics, and others on the philosophy of farming, and the maturation of grain. He was also a member of the Chetham Society, and of the Lancashire and Cheshire Historical Society, to the latter of which he contributed various articles.

Mr. Just was appointed, in 1834, the Second Master of the Bury Free Grammar School; and somewhere about the same time he became one of the botanical lecturers connected with the Pine Street School of Medicine. He gave also one or two courses of lectures on Botany at the Royal Institution in Manchester, and was to have delivered a course on the same subject of popular botany in May last, which was put a stop to by his sickness.

It would be unjust to the memory of Mr. Just were we not to add that he deeply felt the importance of Divine truth, and often expressed his surprise that there should ever be in the mind of any person a severance between science and religion. He was warmly attached to the Established Church, and a regular attendant on its ordinances; and he was also a teacher, as long as he was able to go out, in the St. John's Sunday School, Bury, and took much interest in the welfare of the young

men that formed his class. He departed this life after a long illness, which ever since April last had confined him almost to his room, and which gave full exercise for submission, faith, patience, and trust in God. His remains were interred in St. Paul's Churchyard, Bury, on Wednesday the 20th Oct. The body was borne to the grave by four of the teachers of St. John's Sunday School, and the funeral was attended by many of his friends from Bury, Manchester, and other places, and also by the masters and scholars of the Grammar School, who met the procession before it reached the church, to show their respect for his memory. He has left a widow and one daughter.

MR. JAMES FILLANS.

Sept. 27. At Glasgow, aged 44, Mr. James Fillans, sculptor of considerable reputation both in Scotland and in London.

Mr. Fillans was a native of Wilsonstown, in Lanarkshire. He served an apprenticeship to a stonemason at Paisley, and among the sculptured works he then executed were the ornamental capitals of the columns of the Royal Exchange, in Glasgow. After quitting the service of his master, he devoted some little time to the modelling of small groups for a person in Paisley; they were much admired, and brought the young sculptor rather prominently before the public. His earliest efforts at original busts were those of William Motherwell, the Scotch poet, and sheriff Campbell, of Paisley; in these he was so far successful, as to secure to the artist the patronage of several influential gentlemen in the West of Scotland, from whom he received commissions, chiefly for busts. In 1835 Mr. Fillans visited Paris, where, among other studies, he copied some of the pictures in the Louvre, and, as we have heard, very cleverly. On his return to England he settled himself in London, where he became acquainted with Allan Cunningham, whose bust he modelled.

For the first exhibition of the Royal Academy in Trafalgar Square, Mr. Fillans sent seven busts, the whole of which were placed, and, what tended greatly to influence his future career, they attracted the notice of Chantrey by their excellence. Chantrey about this time had been offered a commission to sculpture a bust of the late Archibald Oswald, esq. as a testimonial from his tenantry in Ayrshire; but Sir Francis was too full of work to undertake any additional task, and he recommended Mr. Fillans, who went over to Vienna, where Mr. Oswald was then staying, and executed the bust; from Vienna

the sculptor passed on into Italy, and remained there a short period.

The finest example of portrait sculpture from his hands is generally considered to be the head of professor Wilson; and his largest work, which scarcely is less deserving of praise, is his colossal statue of Sir James Shaw, erected in the town of Kilmarnock. The most prominent of his fancy or ideal sculptures are "The Birth of Burns," an alto-rilievo; a life-sized group, "Blind Girls reading the Scriptures; another life-sized group, in marble, "Madonna and Child," and a lifesized single figure of " Rachel weeping for her Children." His practice, however, was chiefly confined to busts, commissions for which, amounting to a considerable number, he held at the time of his death. There is also little doubt but, had he turned his attention to the art of painting, he would have attained celebrity; as it was, he painted several pictures for which he had received commissions.

Mr. Fillans was justly held in high estimation among his countrymen for his talents as a sculptor, his varied general attainments, and his unassuming deportment; a few years back they testified their sense of his worth by entertaining him at a public dinner at Paisley. An attack of rheumatic fever terminated a life full of promise for the future, and at an age when a long continuance of well-spent years might reasonably have been expected. He has left a widow and eight children, to whom, unhappily, he has bequeathed only his reputation.-Art Journal.

MR. THOMAS WOODWARD. Oct. At Worcester, aged 51, Mr. Thomas Woodward, animal painter.

Mr. Woodward was born at Pershore in the year 1801, his father's family having been long known and greatly respected in the neighbourhood. At eight years of age he was constantly penciling the forms of farm-yard denizens; his leisure hours, and often his school time, was intensely devoted to his favourite pursuit, as hundreds of sheets of blank forms connected with his father's office of clerk to the turnpike trustees could attest. He was not more than eight years old when one of his productions was brought under the eye of Benjamin West, President of the Academy, who spoke in high terms of the promise held out in his juvenile efforts. Approbation in such a quarter no doubt strengthened the boy's desire to adopt the fine arts as a profession, nor could even parental hesitation deter him from adhering to this resolve.

At first it was proposed that he should

study under Ward, R.A., but eventually he was articled to Abraham Cooper for twelve months. His progress under that excellent master was satisfactory; he soon showed that the promise of his childhood would be fulfilled in his maturity. In 1822 he exhibited at the British Institution a picture to which he gave the quaint title of "Stop Thief," representing a dog running away with a piece of meat from other dogs, who are in eager pursuit. Of that picture the Examiner critic remarked, that from its style and merit he had really taken it for a performance of Mr. Cooper, the Royal Academician. The same critic, in 1828, speaking of the artist's "Mazeppa," at the Royal Academy, remarks:-" Mr. Woodward, who has hitherto been seen in little more than single animals, surprises us with his Mazeppa, where the horses, under the most excited feelings, look as if they came of the renowned race of Homer's steeds, and remind us of that grand Eastern passage,

Hast Thou given the horse strength? Hast Thou clothed his neck with thunder? The glory of his nostrils is terrible.'"

Sir Edwin Landseer often referred to Woodward's works in the most liberal spirit of commendation, and even went beyond that in a very marked manner. Many years ago the late Vice-Chancellor, Sir Robert Wigram, applied to Landseer to paint the portrait of a favourite horse. From some cause the great painter declined the commission, dismissing it with a recommendation to "" go to Woodward."

Although his favourite studies were animals, yet Mr. Woodward's easel was by no means a stranger to other subjects. He even essayed the highest department of painting with success in his "Battle of Worcester," his "Struggle for the Standard," and other historical pictures; while his landscapes were such as the best master in that branch might have felt proud of. He painted a few portraits, which were always admirable likenesses, but this was not a favourite walk with him, and it would be unjust to the artist to refer to these as sustaining his wellearned reputation. Among the purchasers of his works were the Duke of Newcastle, the Duke of Montrose, Sir Robert Peel, the Earl of Essex, and Mr. Wells of Redleaf, one of the most ardent supporters of British art in the present century, who possessed seven of Woodward's pictures. He was employed to paint some favourite horses for Her Majesty and the Prince. He executed some beautiful pictures of Highland scenery, the landscapes being of course subservient to his favourite subjects of cattle, but at the same time so excellent in themselves, and so admirably handled,