231 traced the course of the Quorra or Niger from Boussa, where Park fell, down to the Gulf of Guinea, they were unable to explore a great part of that immense portion of it which flows between Boussa and Tim- buctoo, and which Park must of necessity have navi- gated. Their united labours have, however, solved the grand problem which has engaged the attention of all civilized nations from the earliest ages to which history leads us back; and there seems little cause for doubt, that, in a short time, the still broken links in the great chain of communication with the centre of Africa will be united. PARK, PATRIC. This talented sculptor, whose career was cut short by a premature death when his professional excellence had attained maturity and given promise of a career of distinction, was born in Glasgow in 1811. His father was Matthew Park, a distinguished builder in that city, who erected the new part of Hamilton Palace. Having shown in early life a decided taste for art, especially in relation to sculpture, he went to Rome, and studied as a pupil under Thorwaldsen; and on his return he settled in London, and was much employed in bust-sculpture, so that at different periods he had a studio in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and in the later period of his life at Manchester. Among the numerous busts which he executed of the most eminent characters of the day, was one of Napoleon III., whom, as a subject for an artist, he greatly admired, and of whom he pro- duced a likeness in marble distinguished for its faith- fulness of resemblance and beauty of execution. This bust is now in the South Kensington Museum. Of his other busts we may particularize those of Thomas Campbell, author of the Pleasures of Hope; of Mr. Layard, M.P., General Sir Charles Napier, the Duke of Cambridge, Lord Macaulay (now in possession of Lady Trevelyan), Lord Jeffrey, D. O. Hill, R.S.A., Sir Archibald Alison, and Professor Ayton; and of these, the last two have been engraved. Another bust not inferior to his choicest productions, entitled A Scottish Lassie, now belonging to the Royal Scot- tish Academy, and placed in the National Gallery of Scotland at Edinburgh, being a likeness of his wife idealized, is particularly worthy of notice and commendation. Although the excellence of Patric Park as an artist was thus so generally recognized, and so largely em- ployed, he was dissatisfied with the mere production of busts; his ambition aspired to complete large, open-air statues, a higher department of art, and better fitted for his genius; but in this longing he was disappointed, as no commission of the kind was offered to him. It may have been that the eccen- tricities of genius, of which he had no small share, would have made his idealizations not only too poetical for the common taste, but have overrun the established bounds of art; and that in public monu- mental effigy, with the prosaic multitude for judges, he would have only subjected himself to failure, and it may be also to ridicule. At all events, such was the result of the only attempt he made upon the public to vindicate his claims as a sculptor of history. The subject of his selection was an allegorical statue of Sir William Wallace; the place of its exhibition was Edinburgh; and in due time the eyes of Modem Athens were astonished with the display of a colossal sure of Mr. Park's company at dinner on Tuesday next, at half-past five o'clock. An answer is requested. "Strand, 9th Nov. 1804." These were the only written documents belonging to Park which the Messrs. Landers, after the most anxious inquiries and investigations, were able to discover. They succeeded, however, in recovering his double-barrelled gun, and the tobe, or short cloak, which he wore when he was drowned. statue of the revered national champion in plaster of Paris with the Scottish lion by his side. Could this be Wallace ? Nothing was to be seen but a huge, burly, naked athlete, ready for the field of glory, and the lion raising his tail in token that he was ready to second the onset. The puzzled spectators, unless they had been told that this king of men and king of beasts meant the Scottish hero and the Scottish na- tion, might have mistaken it for Samson and the lion which he tore in pieces, or Androclus and his shaggy friend of the forest taking an airing after the lamed foot of the latter had been cured; and they departed in dudgeon, as if a deception had been played upon them, instead of pausing to admire the artistic beauty of the model. Notwithstanding the adverse remarks of the general public, which were exclusively levelled at a mistaken mode of treatment, critics recognized in this colossal figure a work of high genius and of great merit. In 1851 Mr. Park was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, and was subsequently chosen an Academician. His death was sudden and tragic. He had gone from Manchester, where he now re- sided, to Warrington, where he was employed upon the bust of a gentleman who had given him a sitting, and was returning to the railway station at War- rington, when he perceived a porter endeavouring to carry a trunk that was too heavy for him. Park hurried forward to assist him; but in attempting to raise the load he overtasked his strength, and burst a blood-vessel, by which his death was occasioned almost instantaneously. This melancholy event occurred on the 16th of August, 1855, and his worth and talents were thus recorded in the annual report of that year by the Royal Scottish Academy:— "A vacancy has occurred in the list of academi- cians by the premature and lamented death of their highly talented brother academician Patric Park, Esq., sculptor, an event which occurred suddenly at Warrington on the 16th of August last. Mr. Park had at the time of his decease only attained the age of forty-four years; and being an enthusiastic student and lover of his profession, his works, especially his portrait-busts—long distinguished by some of the highest qualities of his noble art—seemed every suc- ceeding year to gain in strength and refinement, so that had life been spared many works of still higher excellence might have been looked for from his pro- lific studio. The Academy exhibitions for a long series of years past, and none of them more strikingly than that of 1855, when his fine bust of the Emperor of the French occupied a place of honour, sufficiently attest the justice of this brief eulogium of the council, and justify their sorrow that, in the death of Patric Park, the Academy has lost one of its most talented members, and the department of sculpture in which he more peculiarly excelled one of its most eminent professors." Mr. Park, as already noticed, was married; his wife was daughter of Robert Carruthers, Esq., Inverness, by whom he had four sons and a daughter. PATEESON, WILLIAM, the original projector of the Bank of England and of Scotland, and of the celebrated settlement of Darien, was born, it is sup- posed, in the year 1655, at Skipmyre, in the parish of Tinwald, Dumfriesshire. It is deeply to be re- gretted that no satisfactory memorials have been pre- served of this remarkable man. Of his education nothing is known, but it is stated in one memoir that he was bred to the church. That Mr. Paterson was either a churchman or a buccaneer at any period of his life appears a gratuitous assumption, unsup-