Thus thrown on his own resources, he set up as a sculptor, and

executed the monument of Guest and one or two others in Westminster abbey; the relief in the pediment of the Mansion house, &c.; but after a while he gave up the chisel, and adopted architecture as his profession. He soon acquired a large city connection; erected a great many buildings; obtained several lucrative surveyorship (to the admiralty, the board of works, the bank of England, Greenwich hospital, the Foundling hospital, &c.); proved himself an excellent man of business; was elected sheriff of London and knighted in 1783; and died Septemper 27, 1788—leaving the largest fortune (nearly £200,000) that had ever been acquired by an architect. Among Sir Robert Taylor's chief architectural works were the wings to the bank of England, removed by his successor Soane; the Six-clerks' offices and other buildings for the court of chancery; Stone buildings, Temple; the duke of Grafton's house, Piccadilly; Lord Grimstone's, Gorhambury; and several other private mansions. He likewise altered old London bridge, and erected the handsome stone bridge of five arches at Henley-on-Thames, the design of which, however, was made by Mr. Hayward of Shropshire, who died before the works were begun. Sir Robert Taylor was an architect of very little invention, and of only mediocre taste. He left the bulk of his property to his son Michael Angelo Taylor, M.P., but bequeathed a considerable sum to the university of Oxford, "for erecting a proper edifice, and for establishing a foundation for the teaching and improving the European languages." As eventually carried out, this formed the well-known Taylor institution.—J. T—e. TAYLOR, Rowland, the English martyr, was chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer, by whom he was appointed to the rectory of Hadleigh in Suffolk. He refused to perform mass in his church at Hadleigh, and was summoned before Gardiner; bishop of Winchester, who was then lord-chancellor. He might have escaped if he had chosen to evade the summons, but he preferred to undergo the ordeal of a trial, where he resolutely and ably defended himself, both on the charge for nonperformance of mass, and for that he, a priest, had contracted marriage. He remained in the king's bench prison until January, 1555, when he was again brought up before Gardiner and his fellow-commissioners, and condemned to death. He was then sent to prison, where he was soon after visited by Bishop Bonner, who wished to dress the victim of his intolerance in the garb of a Romish priest, but who was unable to do so until he had used great violence towards him—Taylor treating the whole affair with contempt, and indignantly resisting. On the 5th of February he was conducted to Oldham Common, near Hadleigh, by the sheriff and other officials, who tried to persuade him to recant, but unavailingly. He was burnt amidst the prayers and blessings of his parishioners, who set up a stone on the place of execution to mark where "Dr. Taylor, in defending that was gode, at this plas left his blode."—F. TAYLOR, Silas, an English antiquary, sometimes called Domville or D'Omville, was the son of Sylvanus Taylor, one of the commissioners under the Commonwealth for ejecting scandalous and inefficient ministers. Silas was born in 1624 at Hanley, near Much Wenlock, Shropshire, and received his education at Shrewsbury and Westminster schools, and at New Inn hall, Oxford. He left the latter to enter the parliamentary army, in which by the interest of his father he obtained a captain's commission. At the termination of the civil war he was appointed a sequestrator of the estates of the royalists in Herefordshire, towards whom he behaved so leniently that he even obtained their friendship; so that at the Restoration, although he was compelled to forego some lucrative appointments, they did net forget his former kindness, and obtained for him the post of commissary of ammunition, &c., at Dunkirk, and afterwards a similar position at Harwich. Taylor discovered some valuable MSS. in the libraries of Hereford and Worcester cathedrals, and left ample materials for a history of Herefordshire. He was the author of several anonymous pamphlets published before the Restoration, and of a "History of Gavelkind," in which he asserts that our English laws are chiefly derived, not from our conquerors the Romans, Saxons, Danes, or Normans, but from the ancient Britons themselves. Taylor was also a musician, and composed a few anthems, as well as edited a volume of music, called "Court Ayres," printed by John Playford. He died in 1678.—F. TAYLOR, Thomas, a learned puritan divine, was born at Richmond, Yorkshire, in 1576, and was educated at Christ's college, Cambridge, where he became Hebrew lecturer. After taking holy orders he settled at Watford in Hertfordshire, whence he removed to Reading, and then to St. Mary Aldermanbury, London. He was highly esteemed as a minister, and preached frequently at Paul's Cross before Queen Elizabeth and King James. He was author of several volumes of sermons, and joint-compiler with Dr. Beard of a once popular collection of stories, called the "Theatre of God's Judgment." He died in 1632.—F. TAYLOR, Thomas, "the Platonist," was born in London in 1758, of parentage obscure but respectable. Educated at St. Paul's school, he was successively employed under a relative in Sheerness dockyard, placed under a dissenting minister with a view to the ministry, and usher in a boarding-school at Paddington, a clerk in the Messrs. Lubbocks' bank, and assistant-secretary to the Society of Arts. When very young his mind seems to have received a twist, and when the Pythagorean Marquis Valadi visited this country, he resided with Taylor, who was also intimate with Mary Wollstonecraft. At last, Taylor's spiritual enthusiasm was absorbed by the study of Plato and the Neo-platonists. A lecture at the Freemasons' tavern on a scheme for a perpetual lamp introduced him to Flaxman the sculptor, who opened his house to him for a series of lectures on the Platonic philosophy, which procured him friends, among them Bennet Langton. Before 1820 he had ceased to be assistant-secretary to the Society of Arts; but a pension of £100 a year had been settled on him by two wealthy patrons, the Messrs. Meredith, who defrayed the expenses of publishing his translation of Aristotle (1812), and other works. The duke of Norfolk paid for the printing, &c., of his translation of Plato (1804), including a revision of the dialogues previously translated by Sydenham. Taylor's publications began in 1780 with "The Elements of a New Method of Reasoning in Geometry," and closed in 1834 with a translation of Plotinus on Suicide. They include translations from Proclus, Porphyry, the Emperor Julian, &c., and one of Pausanias' Description of Greece (1794), executed in ten months, and for which he received only £60, losing the use of his right hand in the course of his excessive labours. He died in November, 1835, at his house at Walworth, where he had lived for forty years absorbed in the study of his favourite writers. We have heard that he left an autobiography. A tolerable sketch of his life was published in the Athenæum at the time of his death, reprinted in the Annual Biography and Obituary for 1836; and the volume of Public Characters for 1798-99 contains a most interesting and evidently authentic account of the early life, struggles, and adventures of this singular man.—F. E. TAYLOR, Thomas, a distinguished Irish naturalist, was born towards the end of the eighteenth century, and died at Dunkerron in February, 1848. He was a doctor of medicine and a fellow of the Linnæan Society. He was well acquainted with various branches of science and literature, but he devoted his attention specially to cryptogamic botany. He assisted Hooker in the Muscologia Britannica, and contributed papers to the London Journal of Botany and to the Linnæan Transactions on Jungermanniaceæ, Hepaticæ, Lichens, and Mosses. He resided in the south of Ireland, and during the existence of the Royal Cork Scientific Institution he occupied the chair of botany and natural history in that establishment. He afterwards retired to Dunkerron, near the Lakes of Killarney. He possessed a moderate independent income, and was not under the necessity of engaging in the practice of his profession.—J. H. B. * TAYLOR, Tom, known chiefly as a dramatic writer, was born at Sunderland in 1817. He was educated there, at Glasgow university, and at Trinity college, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow. Entering himself at the Inner temple, he was called to the bar in 1845, and went the northern circuit. Meanwhile he had commenced his long connection with Punch, some of his most striking contributions to which have been in the department of serious poetry. In 1850 he was appointed assistant-secretary to the board of health, of which he became secretary in 1854. He is the author or adapter, singly or in conjunction with Mr. Charles Reade, of a number of popular dramas; the compiler of the Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon, the painter, 1853, from his autobiography and journals; and the editor of the Autobiographical Recollections of the late C. R. Leslie, 1860. In 1858 he published an edition of the Local Government Act. Mr. Taylor's latest work is a "Handbook to the Pictures in the International Exhibition of 1862."—F. E. TAYLOR, William, "of Norwich," as he styled himself,