are still in the possession of his descendants, the family of the Earl of Portsmouth, and were used by Brewster for his biogaphy of Newton. We have to thank Conduitt among other things for having preserved Newton's famous comparison of himself to 'a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.' Turnor's book also contains Conduitt's minute of a remarkable conversation with Newton on the exhaustion of the fuel of the sun, and its possible renovation by comets, which shows the interest he himself took in such questions. Conduitt died 23 May 1737, and was buried in Westminster Abbey on the right-hand side of Sir Isaac Newton. His only child, a daughter, married on 8 July 1740 Viscount Lymington, eldest son of the first Earl of Portsmouth. Their son succeeded as second Earl of Portsmouth.
[Brewster's Life of Newton; Chester's Registers of Westminster Abbey; Welch's Scholars of St. Peter's College, Westminster; Gent. Mag. vol. vii.; Turnor's Hist. of Grantham; Boulter's Letters to Ministers of State; Jevons's Investigations in Currency and Finance; De Morgan's Newton, his Friend and his Niece.]
CONDY or CUNDY, NICHOLAS (1793?–1857), painter, is supposed to have been born at Torpoint, in the parish of Antony East, Cornwall, in 1793, but no entry of his baptism is to be found in the register kept at Antony Church. He was gazetted to the 43rd regiment as an ensign on 9 May 1811, and served in the Peninsula; became lieutenant on 24 Feb. 1818, and was thenceforth on half-pay during the remainder of his life. From 1818 he devoted his attention to art, and became a professional painter at Plymouth. He chiefly produced small water-colours on tinted paper, about eight inches by five inches, which he sold at prices ranging from fifteen shillings to one guinea each. Between 1830 and 1845 he exhibited at the Royal Academy two landscapes, at the British Institution four, and at the Suffolk Street Gallery one. His best known painting is entitled ‘The Old Hall at Cotehele on a Rent-day,’ and is in the possession of the Earl of Mount-Edgcumbe at Mount-Edgcumbe. He brought out a work called ‘Cotehele, on the Banks of the Tamar, the ancient seat of the Right Hon. the Earl of Mount-Edgcumbe, by N. Condy, with a descriptive account written by the Rev. F. V. J. Arundell, 17 plates, London, published by the author, at 17 Gate Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields.’ He died at 10 Mount Pleasant Terrace, Plymouth, on 8 Jan. 1857, aged 64, and was buried in St. Andrew's churchyard. By his wife Ann Trevanion Pyle (1792–1860), daughter of Capt. Mark Oates of the marines, he was father of Nicholas Matthews Condy, who has often been confused with him. He was born at Union Street, Plymouth, in 1818, and having been educated at Exeter was intended for the army or navy, but preferred becoming a professor of painting in his native town. He exhibited three sea-pieces at the Royal Academy from 1842 to 1845, which gave hopes of his becoming a distinguished artist; but he died suddenly and prematurely at the Grove, Plymouth, on 20 May 1851, when aged only thirty-three. He married Flora Ross, third daughter of Major John Lockhart Gallie, of the 28th regiment.
[Notes and Queries, 3 Jan. 1885, p. 17; Smith's Plymouth Almanac (1885); Redgrave's Dict. of Artists.]
CONEY, JOHN (1786–1833), draughtsman and engraver, was born in Ratcliff Highway, London, in 1786. He was apprenticed to an architect, but never followed the profession. Among his early studies were pencil drawings of the interior of Westminster Abbey; these he sold principally to dealers. In 1806 he exhibited at the Royal Academy a 'Perspective View of Lambeth Palace,' and resided at 39 Craven Street, Strand. Coney's first publication was a work entitled 'A Series of Views representing the Exterior and Interior of Warwick Castle . . . with an accurate plan and brief account of that . . . example of British Architecture,' Lon-don, fol., 1815. The plates were drawn and etched by himself. He was next employed for fourteen years by Harding to draw and engrave a series of exterior and interior views of the cathedrals and abbey churches of England, intended to illustrate the new edition of Sir William Dugdale's 'Monasticon,' edited by Sir Henry Ellis, &c., 8 vols., London, fol., 1846. In 1829 he commenced the engravings of the cathedrals, hotels de ville, town halts, &c., in France, Holland, Germany, and Italy, with descriptions in four languages. These were published in an imperial folio, 32 plates, London, 1832. The next important work, also engraved and designed by himself, was 'The Beauties of Continental Architecture,' 28 plates and 50 vignettes, fol., London, 1843. Cockerell, the eminent architect [q. v.], employed Coney to engrave a large view of Rome, and he also engraved some drawings of the Law Courts, Westminster, for Sir John Soane. Coney died of an enlargement of the heart in Leicester Place, Camberwell, on 15 Aug. 1833.
In addition to the above-mentioned works he was the author of 'English Ecclesiastical
