Florence and the Florentines, and show a keen sense of humour, elsewhere excluded from his work. Of his decorative paintings, the best known are the elegant compositions (in spirit fresco) on the walls of the Victoria and Albert Museum, representing “The Industrial Arts of War and Peace.” There, also, is the refined and spirited figure of “Cimabue” in mosaic. In Lyndhurst church are mural decorations to the memory of Mr Pepys Cockerell, illustrating “The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins.”
Leighton’s life was throughout marked by distinction, artistic and social. Though not tall, he had a fine presence and manners, at once genial and courtly. He was welcomed in all societies, from the palace to the studio. He spoke German, Italian and French, as well as English. He had much taste and love for music, and considerable gifts as an orator of a florid type. His Presidential Discourses (published, London, 1896) were full of elegance and culture. For seven years (1876–1883) he commanded the 20th Middlesex (Artists) Rifle Volunteers, retiring with the rank of honorary colonel, and subsequently receiving the Volunteer Decoration. Yet no social attractions or successes diverted him from his devotion to his profession, the welfare of his brethren in art or of the Royal Academy. As president he was punctilious in the discharge of his duties, ready to give help and encouragement to artists young and old, and his tenure of the office was marked by some wise and liberal reforms. He frequently went abroad, generally to Italy, where he was well known and appreciated. He visited Spain in 1866, Egypt in 1868, when he went up the Nile with Ferdinand de Lesseps in a steamer lent by the Khedive. He was at Damascus for a short time in 1873. It was his custom on all these trips to make little lively sketches of landscape and buildings. These fresh little flowers of his leisure used to decorate the walls of his studio, and at the sale of its contents after his death realized considerable prices. It was when he was in the full tide of his popularity and success, and apparently in the full tide of his personal vigour also, that he was struck with angina pectoris. For a long time he struggled bravely with this cruel disease, never omitting except from absolute necessity any of his official duties except during a brief period of rest abroad, which failed to produce the desired effect. His death occurred on the 25th of January 1896.
Leighton was elected an Academician in 1868, and succeeded Sir Francis Grant as President in 1878, when he was knighted. He was created a baronet in 1886, and was raised to the peerage in 1896, a few days before his death. He held honorary degrees at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh and Durham, was an Associate of the Institute of France; a Commander of the Legion of Honour, and of the Order of Leopold. He was a Knight of the Coburg Order, “Dem Verdienste,” and of the Prussian Order, “Pour le Mérite,” and a member of at least ten foreign Academies. In 1859 he won a medal of the second class at the Paris Salon, and at the Exposition Universelle of 1889 a gold medal. As a sculptor he was awarded a medal of the first class in 1878 and the Grand Prix in 1889.
See Art Annual (Mrs A. Lang), 1884; Royal Academy Catalogue, Winter Exhibition, 1897; National Gallery of British Art Catalogue; C. Monkhouse, British Contemporary Artists (London, 1899); Ernest Rhys, Frederick, Lord Leighton (London, 1898, 1900). (C. Mo.)
LEIGHTON, ROBERT (1611–1684), archbishop of Glasgow,
was born, probably in London (others say at Ulishaven, Forfarshire),
in 1611, the eldest son of Dr Alexander Leighton, the
author of Zion’s Plea against the Prelacie, whose terrible sufferings
for having dared to question the divine right of Episcopacy,
under the persecution of Laud, form one of the most disgraceful
incidents of the reign of Charles I. Dr Leighton is said to have
been of the old family of Ulishaven in Forfarshire. From his
earliest childhood, according to Burnet, Robert Leighton was
distinguished for his saintly disposition. In his sixteenth year
(1627) he was sent to the university of Edinburgh, where, after
studying with distinguished success for four years, he took the
degree of M.A. in 1631. His father then sent him to travel
abroad, and he is understood to have spent several years in
France, where he acquired a complete mastery of the French
language. While there he passed a good deal of time with
relatives at Douai who had become Roman Catholics, and with
whom he kept up a correspondence for many years afterwards.
Either at this time or on some subsequent visit he had also a
good deal of intercourse with members of the Jansenist party.
This intercourse contributed to the charity towards those who
differed from him in religious opinion, which ever afterwards
formed a feature in his character. The exact period of his
return to Scotland has not been ascertained; but in 1641 he
was ordained Presbyterian minister of Newbattle in Midlothian.
In 1652 he resigned his charge and went to reside in Edinburgh.
What led him to take this step does not distinctly appear.
The account given is that he had little sympathy with the fiery
zeal of his brother clergymen on certain political questions, and
that this led to severe censures on their part.
Early in 1653 he was appointed principal of the university of Edinburgh, and primarius professor of divinity. In this post he continued for seven or eight years. A considerable number of his Latin prelections and other addresses (published after his death) are remarkable for the purity and elegance of their Latinity, and their subdued and meditative eloquence. They are valuable instructions in the art of living a holy life rather than a body of scientific divinity. Throughout, however, they bear the marks of a deeply learned and accomplished mind, saturated with both classical and patristic reading, and like all his works they breathe the spirit of one who lived very much above the world. His mental temper was too unlike the temper of his time to secure success as a teacher.
In 1661, when Charles II. had resolved to force Episcopacy once more upon Scotland, he fixed upon Leighton for one of his bishops (see Scotland, Church of). Leighton, living very much out of the world, and being somewhat deficient in what may be called the political sense, was too open to the persuasions used to induce him to enter a sphere for which he instinctively felt he was ill qualified. The Episcopacy which he contemplated was that modified form which had been suggested by Archbishop Ussher, and to which Baxter and many of the best of the English Nonconformists would have readily given their adherence. It is significant that he always refused to be addressed as “my lord,” and it is stated that when dining with his clergy on one occasion he wished to seat himself at the foot of the table.
Leighton soon began to discover the sort of men with whom he was to be associated in the episcopate. He travelled with them in the same coach from London towards Scotland, but having become, as he told Burnet, very weary of their company (as he doubted not they were of his), and having found that they intended to make a kind of triumphal entrance into Edinburgh, he left them at Morpeth and retired to the earl of Lothian’s at Newbattle. He very soon lost all hope of being able to build up the church by the means which the government had set on foot, and his work, as he confessed to Burnet, “seemed to him a fighting against God.” He did, however, what he could, governing his diocese (that of Dunblane) with the utmost mildness, as far as he could, preventing the persecuting measures in active operation elsewhere, and endeavouring to persuade the Presbyterian clergy to come to an accommodation with their Episcopal brethren. After a hopeless struggle of three or four years to induce the government to put a stop to their fierce persecution of the Covenanters, he determined to resign his bishopric, and went up to London in 1665 for this purpose. He so far worked upon the mind of Charles that he promised to enforce the adoption of milder measures, but it does not appear that any material improvement took place. In 1669 Leighton again went to London and made fresh representations on the subject, but little result followed. The slight disposition, however, shown by the government to accommodate matters appears to have inspired Leighton with so much hope that in the following year he agreed, though with a good deal of hesitation, to accept the archbishopric of Glasgow. In this higher sphere he redoubled his efforts with the Presbyterians to bring about
