In 1778, a charming society novel, "Evelina,"  kept our artist up all one night, so eager was he to read it. For a time no one knew the author, while everyone was commenting and wondering about it. It shortly developed that this pleasing story was the work of Fanny Burney, a mere girl and a great favorite of Dr. Johnson, to whom he always referred as "Little Burney." She was the daughter of Dr. Burney, a music teacher and composer, and was one of Johnson's most valued friends, at whose house he spent many happy hours. Miss Burney now joined this gifted company and was a sort of pet among those older notables. Her father sat to Reynolds for his portrait, which proved to be one of the best Sir Joshua ever painted.

In the summer and fall of 1780, Reynolds spent two months visiting the Low Countries and Germany. He made a study of the art works of the former and his comments on Dutch paintings we prize to-day. He was always a great admirer of Rembrandt and this visit strengthened his admiration. He considered the paintings of the Low Countries as a sort of grammar school, as he expressed it, to the art student, while to Italy, he said, the student must go for the higher instruction. This brief trip, together with one quite as short to Paris years before, was the only break in his long residence in London. A man who accomplished the amount of work Reynolds did could not spend long periods in travel or other recreation.

Just ten years after Goldsmith's death, Johnson, then old and infirm, left the gaiety of earth. Shortly before he had written to Reynolds, "We are now old acquaintances and perhaps few people have lived so much and so long together with less cause of complaint on either side. The retrospection of this is very pleasant and I hope we shall never think on each other with less kindness." The painter was with Johnson during his last hours and he promised his dying friend three things—not to paint on Sunday, to read his Bible regularly, and to forgive him a debt of thirty pounds. All except the first part of his promise was loyally kept. When he became persuaded that his friend had no right to exact such a promise to the contrary he again took up his old practice of painting on Sunday.

So greatly did Reynolds rejoice in his work that it was a rare day that he did not touch his brush. Such a day it was when Gerrick died and it is said that was no other way in which he could so deeply show his sorrow at his friend's death.

Thus death and decay were waiting upon this circle of distinguished men and women, the glory of their age. Already three of their most noted men had passed away. Just across the square there Gainsborough had breathed his last. In his closing hours he had asked for Reynolds, his rival, from whom he had always stood aloof, and with "graying lips" he had whispered into Sir Joshua's "dulled ears" his last words—a message of wide forgiveness though couched in unusual language, "We are all going to heaven and Van Dyck is of the party."

Four years later Reynolds himself had joined that mysterious party, "wandering to the better land."

His health had never been robust. The infirmity of his deafness had grown upon him and in 1789 he was smitten with partial blindness, of the sort that afflicted Milton in his old age. The hand and the mind that had plied so incessantly a loved art now rested almost completely. The serenity, however, that follows a life well spent and crowned with success dropped upon him like a protecting mantle. He went out among his friends as before and yet with moderation, too. He frequently went to Westminster Hall to listen to his friends Sheridan and Burke, in the great trial of Warren Hastings then going on. He visited the country places of some of his friends and frequently refreshed himself with the air of the seashore.

In 1790, he delivered his last lecture before the Academy and the scene was an affecting one. He closed with these words, "I reflect, not without vanity, that these Discourses bear testimony of my admiration of that truly divine man; and I should desire that the last words I should pronounce, in this Academy and from this place might be the name of ." Then from that crowded and deeply touched audience Burke stepped forth and, grasping the hand of the President, repeated the words of Milton:— "The angel ended, and in Adam's ear, So charming left his voice, that he awhile Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear."

His nieces tended to his every want and the old friends who still remained were often with him. He petted his birds, of which he had always been fond, and played an occasional game of whist which always gave him great pleasure. When the end finally came, in 1792, it seemed but that transition of which our Longfellow so beautifully writes. After a funeral pageant in which nearly a hundred carriages of the nobility joined, he was laid to rest in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral by the side of his townsman, Sir Christopher Wren, who had reared that giant building in the heart of London. Later other great artists were laid beside these two and not a few of England's other distinguished dead. Twenty years afterwards, the English sculptor, Flaxman, carved a statue of Reynolds which stands near the choir in St. Paul's.

A ponderous Latin inscription, commending Sir Joshua's taste, his skill and his elegant manners, is carved on his tomb. Better, however, does that other epitaph, a jest of Goldsmith's, written in a hilarious mood, characterize the great painter, and noble Englishman and the kindly friend:— "Here Reynolds is laid; and, to tell you my mind, He has not left a wiser or better behind. His pencil was striking, [can't read the whole word] and grand; His manners were gentle, complying and bland; Still born to improve us with every part,— His pencil our faces, his manners our heart. To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering When they judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing: When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios and stuff, He shifted his trumpet and only took snuff."