plexed father stated his difficulty and besought their advice. After deep consideration, their decision was unanimous that the youth should be permitted to pursue the objects to which he was, now, both by nature and habit, attached; and young Benjamin was called in, and solemnly set apart, by the primitive brethren, for his chosen profession. The circumstances of this consecration, were so remarkable, that, coupled with the early prophecy already mentioned, they made an impression on West's mind that served to strengthen greatly his resolution for advancement in Art, and for devotion to it, as his supreme object, through life.

On the death of his affectionate mother, he finally left his father's house, and, not being yet nineteen, set up in Philadelphia as a portrait-painter, and soon found plenty of employment. For the three or four succeeding years he worked unremittingly, making his second essay at historic painting within that term, but labouring at portraits, chiefly with the view of winning the means to enable himself to visit Italy. His desire was, at length,

accomplished, a merchant of New York, generously presenting him with fifty guineas, as an additional outfit, and thus assisting him to reach Rome without the uneasiness that would have arisen from straitness of means in a strange land.

The appearance of a Quaker artist, of course, caused great excitement in the metropolis of Art; crowds of wonderers were formed around him; but, when in the presence of the great relics of Grecian genius, he was the wildest wonderer of all. "How like a young Mohawk!" he exclaimed, on first seeing the "Apollo Belvidere," its life-like perfection bringing before his mind, instantaneously, the free forms of the desert children of Nature, in his native America. The excitement of little more than one month, in Rome, threw him into a dangerous illness, from which it was some time before he recovered. He visited the other great cities of Italy, and also painted and exhibited two great historical pictures, which were successful, ere the three years were completed which he stayed in that country. He would have returned to Philadelphia; but a

letter from his father recommended him, first,

to visit England.

West's success in London was, speedily, so decided, that he gave up all thoughts of returning to America. For thirty years of his life, he was chiefly employed in executing for King George the Third, the great historical and scriptural pictures which now adorn Windsor Palace, and the Royal Chapel. After the abrupt termination of the commission given him by the King, he continued, still, to be a laborious painter. His pictures in oil amount to about four hundred, and many of them are of very large dimensions, and contain a great number of figures. Among these may be mentioned, for its wide celebrity, the representation of "Christ healing the Sick," familiar to every visitor of the National Gallery. If polished taste be more highly charmed with other treasures there, the heart irresistibly owns the excellence of this great realisation by the child of the American Quaker. He received three thousand guineas for this picture, and his rewards were of the most substantial kind ever after his settlement in England. He was also

appointed President of the Royal Academy on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and held the office at his own death, in the eighty-second year of his of his age.

Though exposed to no opposition from envy or jealousy, at any time of his career, and though encouraged in his childish bent, and helped by all who knew him and had the power to help him, without Perseverance of the most energetic character, Benjamin West would not have continued without pattern or instruction to labour on to excellence, nor would he have sustained his prosperity so firmly, or increased its productiveness so wondrously.