Although not possessing those high qualifications in art and science which the architect now strives to bring to his profession, Hopper's life ie not the less an important one in the later history of architecture. He lived to enter the eighty-first or eighty-second year of his age, dying ou the 11th of August 1856 at his cottage, which had been built by him, at Bayswater Hill. In life, he possessed a frame which could support almost any amount of fatigue,-and although lie was con temporary with the bon virants of the Georgian era, he never drank anything but water. lie practised athletic exercises with Jackson the boxer, and was active in command of a company of the volunteers. His features and form have been exactly given by Mr. J. Teruouth, the sculptor, in the relieve on the eastern compartment of the Nelson Column, to the sailor who is supporting a wounded boy. He was always connected with the leading personages of his day, and this cir cumstance afforded him iuexhanstible anecdotes. The Prince Regent would have conferred on him the honour of knighthood, but this ho declined, as well as offers from Alexander L, emperor of Russia and the Duchess of Oldenburg, for him to settle at St. Petersburg. The obituary notice in the ' Builder' (vol. xiv., p. 481)-the facte of which are apparently, like those above, derived from family sources-calls him "a man of mark and power," a conclusion which may help to justify the position which we have given to his name.
HOPI'NElt, JOHN, ILA., was born in London in 1759. "There is a mystery," says Cunningham (who however, it must be remembered, delighted in a bit of scandal), "about his birth, which no one has ventured to explain : all that is known with certainty is, that his mother was one of the German attendants at the Royal Palace."
'When young ho was one of the choristers in the Chapel Royal. He studied afterwards In the Royal Academy of Arts; and before he was thirty years of age he had, owing to the active patronage of the Prince of Wales, painted more royal and noble portraits than usually falls to the lot of distinguished portrait-painters during the whole of a long life. Hoppner soon distanced Opio and Owen in fashionable favour, and for eighteen years Lawrence was his only rival : Lawrence was patronised by the king, while the prince and his party patronised Hopprier. lloppnees style is easy and effective, but gaudy; his heads have frequently much character, and are well modelled, though perhaps the opposite case occurs more frequently, especially in his male heads : be had also 301110 skill in landscape painting. lie died of dropsy in 1810. His son was for some years British consul at Venice.
At the exhibition of works of deceased British artists; at the British Institution in 1817, there were seven portraits by Ifoppocr, including his own, a very spirited work, which he presented to the Royal Academy in 1809, upon his election as a member of that body. His portrait of Nelson was in the exhibition at the same institution, in 1820, of ' Portraits representing distieFuished persons in the history and literature of the United Kingdom : it is however a less manly head than the one painted by Lemuel Abbot, which was engraved by J. Heath in 1801.