HOPE, THOMAS, adescendant of the wealthy family of the Hopes of Amsterdam, was born about the year 1770. "From an infant," as he himself tells us, "architecture was always my favourite amusement No sooner did I becomo master of myself, which unfortunately happened at the early age of eighteen, than disdaining any longer to ride my favourite hobby only in the confinement of a closet, I hastened in quest of food for it in all tho different countries where any could be expected." He remained abroad several years : his passion for architecture inducing him to explore regions that were then considered almost beyond the track of civilisation—to study the monuments of Egypt on the banks of the Nile; those of Ionia, Northern Greece, the Peloponnesus, and Sicily; those of the Tartar and Persian styles in Turkey and Syria ; of the Moorish and Arabian on the coasts of Africa and in Spain; those of the Etruscan, Lombardic styles, &c., in Italy ; and finally, those of the Gothic, in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and afterwards here at home.
Eight years, he tells us, were thus occupied by him with a perse vering application that would have daunted most professional students, more especially as his researches were attended with many fatigues and privations, and frequently with great risks. Soon after his return to England, he began to apply his studies practically by remodelling and enlarging his mansion in Duchess-street, Portland-place, extending the plan of the original house very considerably by galleries carried round three sides of the court-yard. Of these rooms, which are in continuation of the apartments on the priucipal floor, the largest one (about 100 fret by 24) is on the north side, and the others, consisting respectively of a suit of small cabinets filled with Etruscan or Greek flails vases, on the east Fide, and the statue gallery on the west ; and in addition to these, Mr. Hope added several years afterwards (1820) the Flemish Gallery, so called from being entirely occupied by pro ductions of that schooL lie thus rendered his house one of the largest private mansions in the metropolis; and though he did not bestow on it the slightest beauty of exterior, or even any regard at all to appear ance, he fitted up and furnished the interior in a style of refined classical taste that was then a decided novelty in this eountry. His first publication on ' Household Furniture,' in 1805 (a splendid folio volume, with 60 plates finely engraved in outline, and representing together with views of the rooms the furniture and decorations of his own mansion), created an entire change in taste, though it also drew down upon him the undeserved ridicule of the ' Edinburgh Review,' which could not resist sneering at the gentleman-upholsterer.
In 1809 appeared his ' Costume of the Ancients,' which had also great influence in promoting a taste for classical design and study; and in the same year he contributed to a periodical (by J. Landseer)
entitled ' Review of Publications of Art,' an essay on the ' Architecture of Theatres.' Mr. Hope had been tho first to discern and patronise the talent of Thorwaldsen, whom he commissioned to execute his ' Jason' for him in marble; but he was not always so fortunate as to select worthy objects of patronage, for in one instance ho bestowed it %here it was altogether unmerited. Some dispute arising between him and a French artist named Dubost, the latter painted and made a public exhibition of a libellous picture professing to be the portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Hope, and announced under the title of ' Beauty and the Beast.' As may be supposed, the affair, which occurred in 1810, made a very great noise at the time ; but the exhibition was soon brought to a close in a very summary manner by Mrs. Hope's brother, who mutilated the picture by thrusting his stick through the canvas. Duboet brought his action for the injury, but did not succeed in obtaining damages.
With the exception of a minor work entitled ' Modern Costumes,' in 1812, Mr. Hope did not publish anything further till 1819, when appeared his Anastasia!, or Memoirs of a Modern Greek at the close of the Eighteenth Century,' but as his name was not attached to it, he was so far from being known or even suspected to be the author, that it was at first confidently attributed by many to Lord Byron, as the only person capable of having produced it Of his two last works, both of them published posthumously, one of them was even still more remote from what may be supposed to have been the constant tenour of 1,1.1 studies, for that ' On the Origin and Prospects of Man' was almost the very last subject that would have been expected from his pen : from furniture to cosmogony the distance is immeasurable. Abstruse in its speculations, it was utterly unphilosophical in its matter, and being considered unorthodox in its opinions, it was after wards withdrawn from publication; while his ' Historical Essay on Architecture,' first published in 1835, on the contrary, became a popular work, and passed through three or four editions. Still it is nothing more than a mere essay, which touches indeed upon a good deal that is pulsed over in other treatises on the subject, yet very slightly; and towards the end it becomes very little more than a series of hasty fragmentary notes.
Besides the above works, Mr. Hope was author of several minor productions and pieces of criticism, one of them being a 'Letter to James Wyatt,' relative to his designs for Downing College, Cambridge, upon which he animadverted very freely, and apparently very justly. Another work—if so it may be called—of his, was his villa of Deep dens, in Surrey, which, if he did not entirely build, he very greatly enlarged, and embellished bath the house and the grounds, which contain a handsome family mausoleum. Mr. Hope died Feb. 3, 1831.