MEDALS BY LEONARD C. WYON, ESQ.

MEDAL OF THE VERY REVEREND THEOBALD MATHEW,

BY LEONARD C. WYON, ESQ. ONE OF THE ENGRAVERS OF HER MAJESTY'S MINT.

[Read before the Cuvierian Society, 3rd November, 1847.]

THIS medal, which has a peculiar interest to many persons in this city, has been engraved by a young and talented artist (the eldest son of her Majesty's Chief Engraver), as a mark of his personal regard and respect for the great apostle of Irish temperance, and to commemorate the labours of love and beneficence of that reverend gentleman, whose friendship many here present have the pleasure to enjoy. It is a truly historical record. It presents neither allegory nor fiction. Facts only are delineated, in all the plainness and severity of truth. Yet, the longer we dwell on obverse and reverse, the more we become interested and absorbed by their powerful representation of nature: while to Nature herself it is a proud triumph that our feelings of all that is sublime and poetical can, as in the instance before us, be called into more intense vitality by the actual occurrences of life, accurately observed and gracefully arranged by the master-mind of genius, and made palpable to us, and handed down to those who may be called into existence thousands of years hence, by the hand of the able engraver, than by the most ingenious and laboured composition drawn from the pantheon of pagan and classical literature.

The obverse has the bust of Father Mathew, modelled from the life by Mr. L. C. Wyon when he was in Cork last year, and I need scarcely remark to those who are so well acquainted with the original, that it is a most perfectly accurate portrait of the very

reverend preacher against drunkenness. It gives the head and shoulders, in his usual dress.* The countenance exhibits all the mild and earnest benevolence of the living man, with all its delicate details of anatomy and physiognomy, more particularly about the eye, so worked out with all the truth and softness of nature, that we forget the artist in the actuality of the representation.

The reverse represents Father Mathew standing, with uplifted arms, and bestowing his blessing on a kneeling crowd. Immediately before him, in the centre, is a peasant, holding his hat in his two hands, and looking down, whose countenance indicates that he is very conscious of having been a grievous offender, and of requiring much forgiveness. To his right, a woman, in the extremity of old age and the intensity of devotion. To his left, and quite in front, a boy, looking up to Father Mathew in perfect and confiding innocence of heart and purpose. In the distance, to the left, a man of higher grade, earnest and sorrowful, and of whom better things might have been expected, but whom we are glad to see reformed. Behind the boy a countrywoman, displaying the broad, massive Irish cloak, and the usual manner of wearing the hair by the peasant girls in this part of the county of Cork, and now made fashionable by her Majesty's example. And leaning on her is a young girl, of surpassing loveliness, looking up also to the reverend preacher with all faith, and joy, and peace in believing. The whole group I know to be portraits from life and costume. They embrace every age and both sexes, with a variety as to conditions of life, and they fairly set before us the universality and success of Father Mathew's ministra. tions, who has been an honoured instrument in the hands of Providence to confer more good and to avert more evil than probably any other person living. To Heaven be the praise! and long may he witness the blessings he has been commissioned to diffuse. The varied beauties of this group, in character, composition, breadth, perspective, and execution, place it in the rank of high art, and the young engraver honourably sustains the excellence which we now habitually look for in a medal by a Wyon.

R. S.

Mr. L. W. proposed to engrave it in ecclesiastical vestments, but Mr. M. desired it to be in his usual dress, in which, he remarked, "I am better known."

MEDAL OF HOGARTH.

ENGRAVED FOR THE LONDON ART UNION BY LEONARD C. WYON, ESQ. SECOND ENGRAVER OF HER MAJESTY'S MINT.

[Read before the Cork Cuvierian Society, 4 July, 1849.]

THE London Art Union distribute annually among their prizes a certain number of medals, and this, I believe, was one of their last year's gifts. I have had the pleasure on former occasions of submitting to you specimens of the work of this young and rising artist. But this of Hogarth startles me by its advance in art. It is an enormous stride forward. The bust realises nature: the reverse realises Hogarth.

I am really at a loss to conceive, as an engraving, how anything could be improved on the painter's face. The oriental copper complexion allowed, it seems true living flesh. I should expect that, if I laid my finger on the cheek, and pressed it, it would sink until I felt the teeth.

I think this will be the most popular medal Leonard Wyon has yet engraved. With his best work to recommend it, the subject is familiar. Every one seems to have known Hogarth from childhood, and never to be tired of the acquaintance. And every one also enters into and enjoys (such is human nature) the known consequences of a contested election for a seat in the Commons House of Parliament, and we mechanically smile at the Acts of the Legislature "to prevent bribery at elections." Legislators may "enact," but, until you can elevate the voter's mind and principles,* the sharpened

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer.-Let not our countrymen run away with the idea that corruption is the necessary consequence of the old mode by which we give our votes in this country. (Hear, hear.) I believe it to be a growing sentiment in the convictions of Englishmen that corruption is the consequence of men not being properly brought up. (Hear.) You may pass laws ostensibly to prevent corruption in countries where nothing is secret, or in countries where nothing is open; but corruption cannot be stopped by law;

and sharper wit of cupidity will counteract and render "null and void "all that Solon may devise or Lycurgus threaten. The reverse, which has suggested these thoughts, is a splendid re-production of Hogarth's celebrated picture of "The Voter," receiving at the same moment money from the agents of two candidates, each of whom with one hand openly presents a card of solicitation, and with the other deposits boldly (hesitating insinuation is evidently needless) a retaining fee to secure the wished-for vote. The substantial breadth, actuality, and correspondence of the figures; the ease and accuracy of the draperies, all blending and harmonising into a realisation of every-day life, on which the mind at once enters as a fact worth looking into, and is not disappointed; the earnest, confidential look and whisper which, if you do not actually hear, you perfectly comprehend, of the agent on the spectator's right, with the down-pour of the gold into the ready, open, back-hand of his new, trusty, and trusted friend; the wide-awake, scarcely disguised, leering return-look of the voter to him; the rather expostulatory, but affectedly open and above-board, address of the rival agent, not less mindful, however, of the weak side of an unconvinced patriot,— all these are worked out by Leonard Wyon's graver with a truth and an ability that, like a camera lucida, or the retina of the human eye, presents the broad expanse of a landscape in all its details, compressed and re-produced within limits that excite equal astonishment. and admiration.

On Hogarth's canvass this impress of Hogarth's mind may, by possibility, should it haply escape "the chances and changes" of its frail nature, attain an existence of some five or six hundred years. Such, at least, was the period assigned to some "immortal" picture,

it can only be stopped by elevating the tone of the community, and making men ashamed of the thing itself. (Cheers.) You must seek for an antidote to corruption in that direction, and not in new-fangled systems of election. I say, further, that the tone of the community in which we live is becoming elevated. Every successive quarter of a century shows a decrease of corruption. No man who knows anything of the tone of public life a hundred years ago can hesitate to admit that corruption then ascended much higher in society than it does at present. You have driven corruption from the higher classes. In proportion as education extends, men become more pure, and when the same influences come into operation among the inferior classes you may hope to obtain a result which it is or the interest of all classes should be accomplished. (Cheers.)”—Report of debate in the House of Commons, March 25, 1852. (Times newspaper.)

in reply to an inquiry by Napoleon as to the probable durability of its paint and canvass.

Transferred by the genius of a Wyon from canvass to metal, it may exist to delight and instruct the world as many thousand years. To authorise this expectation, you have now laid before you a coin of Antiochus the Sixth, King of Syria, almost in as fine condition and preservation as the day on which it was struck; yet coined in the year of the Seleucidæ 168, which was 143 years before Christ, and 1992 years, therefore, have passed over his head, leaving the youthful king in all his pristine beauty. Who, then, can venture to speculate on the unchanged existence which "the medal, faithful to its charge of fame," may not also confer upon the picture and portrait of Hogarth?

RD. SAINTHIll.

MEDAL OF JOHN HUNTER,

BY LEONARD C. WYON, ESQ. OF HER MAJESTY'S MINT.

[Read before the Cork Cuvierian Society, June, 1851.]

Cork, 7 April, 1851.

MY DEAR LEN.-May wonders-such wonders, at least, as John Hunter-never cease by Len. Wyon for the next fifty years (and surely I am most disinterested, personally speaking, in the prayer, for my life is never worth a three weeks' purchase, and I have not seen your name among those sent for from the Palace to form a Ministry). I am astonished by John Hunter. The full-faced bust is a medallic triumph, in one of its most trying fields, where we have been taught its difficulties by endless failures and so few successes. Altogether your work is marvellous! So perfectly true to nature, so thinkingly alive, yet so quietly effective. We may fancy, as we dwell on the countenance, that the mind has concluded, but as yet