this academy had a salary of two thousand pounds a year; ten seats, each five hundred; and forty young artists were maintained, and had apartments allotted them, with pensions of one hundred pounds a year each. Nothing was ever better planned to promote the progress of this delightful art; and its success in England under this reign was accordingly prodigious. Nicholson, an English artist, and whose name will for ever stand foremost in the list of painters was the President of the academy. Besides which appointment he was loaded with riches, and created a Baronet. The battle of the angels, in the salon of the palace, which this great man painted, is second to no picture in the world. Tomkins, Vere, and Norton, were all English artists, and not inferior to the celebrated Italians of the age of Leo X. The first was equal to Correggio himself, and the last exceeded Dominichi and Guido. Who does not glow withardour
