The death of Mrs. West, which event occurred on the 10th of December, 1817, was a severe blow for the aged artist. His own health began to decline, and his hand had lost some of its power. He felt the blow severely, and never entirely recovered from its effects. Three years later (11th of March, 1820), he departed this life without any fixed complaint, his cheerfulness uneclipsed, his mental faculties unimpaired, and with a mind serene and benevolent. Mr. Galt enables us to enter into details concerning this event: "The last illness of Mr. West was slow and languishing. It was rather a general decay of nature than any specific malady; and he continued to enjoy his mental faculties in perfect distinctness upon all subjects as long as the powers of articulation could be exercised. To his merits as an artist and a man I may be deemed partial, nor do I wish to be thought otherwise. I have enjoyed his frankest confidence for many years, and received from his conversation the advantages of a more valuable species of instruction, relative to the arts, than books alone can supply to one who is not an artist. While I therefore admit that the partiality of friendship may tincture my opinion of his character, I am yet confident that the general truth of the estimate will be admitted by all who knew the man, or are capable to appreciate the merits of his works.

"In his deportment Mr. West was mild and considerate; his eye was keen, and his mind apt; but he was slow and methodical in his reflections, and the sedateness of his remarks must often, in his younger years, have seemed to strangers singularly at variance with the vivacity of his look. That vivacity, however, was not the result of any particular animation of temperament; it was rather the illuminations of his genius; for, when his features were studiously considered, they appeared to resemble those which we find associated with dignity of character in the best productions of art. As an artist, he will stand in the first rank; his name will be classed with those of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle; but he possessed little in common with either. As the former has been compared to Homer and the latter to Virgil, in Shakspeare we shall perhaps find the best likeness to the genius of Mr. West. He undoubtedly possessed but in a slight degree that energy and physical expression of character in which Michael Angelo excelled, and in a still less degree that serene sublimity which constitutes the charm of Raffaelle's great productions, but he was their equal

in the fullness, the perspicuity, and the propriety of his compositions. In all his great works, the scene intended to be brought before the spectator is represented in such a manner that the imagination has nothing to supply. The incident, the time, and the place are there as we think they must have been; and it is this wonderful force of conception which renders the sketches of Mr. West so much more extraordinary than his finished pictures. In the finished pictures we naturally institute comparisons in coloring, and in beauty of figure, and in a thousand details which are never noticed in the sketches of this illustrious artist. But, although his powers of conception were so superior, equal in their excellence to Michael Angelo's energy or Raffaelle's grandeur, still, in the inferior departments of drawing and coloring he was one of the greatest artists of his age. It was not, however, till late in life that he executed any of those works in which he thought the splendor of the Venetian school might be judiciously imitated. At one time he intended to collect his works together, and to form a general exhibition of them all. Had he accomplished this, the greatness and versatility of his talents would have been established beyond all controversy; for unquestionably he was one of those great men whose genius can not be justly estimated by particular works, but only by a collective inspection of the variety, the extent, and the number of their productions."

Added to his unquestionable genius, West had diligence and enthusiasm. He was at once a patient and an expeditious worker. At the time of his death he left upward of four hundred paintings and sketches in oil, many of them of a large size, besides more than two hundred original drawings in his portfolio. It was calculated that, to exhibit all his productions, a gallery would be required of four hundred feet in length, fifty in breadth, and forty in height. West's pictures were sold after his death for upward of twenty-five thousand pounds. During his life he received large sums. From 1769 to 1779 he obtained £4126 for seventeen compositions, seven of which were historical, and the remainder family portraits. For the religious subjects £21,705 were paid. For eight subjects illustrative of the history of Edward the Third he received £6930, while for some miscellaneous works, executed for the same patron, he received £1426. These sums, which were received from the king alone, are exclusive of innumerable others of equal importance, and amount in all, including sale, to upward

of three huudred thousand dollars. The proceeds of his brush during his residence. in England could not have amounted to less than half a million of dollars.

West was a kind and considerate countryman to all the Americans he met in England, and felt genially toward the land of his birth, although the circumstances which had surrounded his life led him to look on the Revolutionary war with great pain. lle had received nothing but kindness from the mother country. Some of his most distinguished pupils were Americans, and he never failed to render them all the assistance that lay in his power. When Trumbull was arrested during the war by order of the British government, West immediately waited upon the king, and made known to his majesty his pupil's character and purposes, and received the assurance that, at all events, the personal safety of the prisoner should be fully attended to. When Gilbert Stuart was in London, a young painter without resources, West not only afforded him direct pecuniary aid, but employed him in copying, and otherwise assisted him in his study of that branch of the art in which he afterward excelled his master. few weeks after Allston's arrival in England he was introduced to Mr. West, and thus speaks of him in a letter: "Mr. West, to whom I was soon introduced, received me with the greatest kindness. I shall never forget his benevolent smile when he took me by the hand; it is still fresh in my memory, linked with the last of like kind which accompanied the last shake of his hand when I took a final leave of him in 1818. His gallery was open to me at all times, and his advice always ready and kindly given. If he had enemies, I doubt if he owed them to any other cause than his rare virtue, which, alas for human nature, is too often deemed cause sufficient."

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Mr. West was buried with great pomp in St. Paul's Cathedral, beside the earthly remains of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Opie, and Barry. The pall was borne by noblemen, embassadors, and academicians; his two sons and grandson were chief mourners, and sixty coaches brought up the splendid procession.

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JOHN FITCH.

THE life-stories of men of genius are often sad, and filled with incidents of cruelty and neglect which after-generations can only deplore. There is none sadder, more truly pitiable, than that of John Fitch. He was a man of pre-eminent force of character ; of native genius; of strength and originality. But these characteristics carried with them restlessness, impetuosity, dissatisfaction, querulousness, and defiance. Such a spirit baffled its own soarings, and, moth-like, rushed more madly to destruction at the first sensation of pain.

We have no intention in this paper to reopen the much-discussed question of "who was the first inventor of the steam vessel." In our article on Fulton we have dropped into the judicious track of most modern inquirers, and awarded to that illustrious man the honor of having first rendered steam navigation generally useful. On this point there can no longer be a doubt. But if the question of originality be mooted-if it be asked who was the most vigorous and original inventor, Fulton or Fitch, the The former was answer would, we fancy, be in favor of Fitch.

a perfecter; he took the materials which already existed, and blended them with master hand. The latter was a creator; he shaped things in his own mind, and brought them forth rudely fashioned, but pregnant with undeveloped strength. It has happened in the world before, and will happen again, that the man who adapts receives more homage than he who invents. There is a common-sense reason why it should be so. The mass of mankind can not understand a theory; their instruction must be of a practical character. He who can impart this reaps the reward, even though it be merely an inculcation of the theory of his predeces

sor.

John Fitch, of whose sad life we purpose to give a brief sketch (compiled chiefly from his own manuscripts in the Franklin Library of Philadelphia), was born on the 21st of January, 1743, old style. His father was a farmer in good circumstances, but of an extremely harsh and parsimonious disposition. At four years of age John was sent to school, and, it is said, made some little prog

ress in the usual branches of an English education. His father did not deem it necessary that he should be taught more than to read and write, and, when he had acquired these accomplishments, set him to work on the farm. But John was eager for knowledge, and greedily devoured all the books that lay in his way. When he was eleven years of age, he heard of a volume which he fancied would give him a knowledge of the whole world-this was Salmon's Geography. He repeatedly asked his father to get it for him to no purpose, but the latter consented to give him some headlands at the end of a field in which he might plant potatoes. Our hero was delighted with the prospect of earning the money for the coveted volume, and set to work with such assiduity that, when the season came round for disposing of his stock, he collected the enormous sum of ten shillings, and intrusted the same to a merchant who dealt in New York to procure him the book. He did so; but the book cost twelve shillings, and John had to run in debt two shillings, which he says gave him a great deal of uneasiness. He congratulated himself that he soon became the best geographer of the world that Connecticut could produce, according to Salmon, at that time.

Being of a stunted” and weakly habit, which he attributed to the ill usage received from his father and brother, Fitch abandoned all idea of becoming an agriculturist. Salmon's Geography "down

had given him a taste for travel, and he determined to go to the sea in ships." He made a couple of experiments in coasting-sloops; but the cruelties and hardships of the maritime profession discouraged him, and he abandoned it. His next experiment was in the clock-making business; but after two years' servitude, during which time he was principally employed in running errands, he left, almost entirely ignorant of the business. Fitch made another attempt to learn it with a brother of his former employer; but here, again, his wishes were frustrated. His employer was jealous of the secrets of the trade; worked in a distant part of the room; locked up his tools when he had finished, and forbade Fitch to meddle with them in any way. He was ill used in more ways than this. "Although I possessed a small appetite," he says, "I never was given sufficient to satisfy it, except on one occasion, when I managed to make a good hearty meal on potatoes. Being an inferior, I was helped last at the table; the females would then discourse upon gluttony, and my