nish distinct evidence, when writing to the painter in 1782: he says "I trust, amidst this blaze of prosperity, that you don't forget your dear native country, and the cause it is engaged in, which I know lay once near your heart, and I trust does so still." Other proofs will, perhaps, occur as we proceed.

In whatever country he was born, he was educated in America; and to her he owes his first inspiration in art. This came upon him, it seems, early enough: when some seven or eight years old, he was observed to absent himself from the family circle for several hours at a time, and was traced to a lonely room, on whose bare walls he had drawn, in charcoal, a group of martial figures, engaged in some nameless adventure. Boston, at this period, had neither academy of arts nor private instructors. Copley had therefore to educate himself- a task, after all, not so difficult to genius as the dull imagine, - and which he set about undismayed, in the absence of models and masters. It is noteworthy, that, almost at the same hour, America produced, amid her deserts and her trading villages, two distinguished painters, West and Copley; who, unknown to each other, were schooling themselves in the rudiments of art, attempting portraits of their friends one day, and historical composition the other; studying nature from the naked Apollos of the wilderness, as some one called the native warriors; and making experiments on all manner of colours, primitive and compound; in short, groping, through inspiration, the right way to eminence and fame. Of Copley's very early works no better account

can be rendered, than that they were chiefly portraits and domestic groups, to which the wild wood scenery of America usually formed backgrounds. I once heard an artist say that the fame of a fine painter, who lived in Boston, found its way to England as early as the year 1760: no name was mentioned; and this, he said, was the more impressed on his mind, because of a painting of a " Boy and a tame Squirrel," which came without any letter or. artist's name, to one of the Exhibitions of the Royal Academy; and when its natural action and the deep vivid colouring made the Academicians anxious to give it a good place, they were at a loss what to say about it in the catalogue, but, from the frame on which it was stretched being American pine, they called the work American. The surmise was just; it was a portrait by Copley of his half-brother, Harry Pelham, and of such excellence as naturally raised high expectations.

In 1767, when Copley was thirty years old, we find him well known to the admirers of art on both sides of the Atlantic: he was then a constant exhibiter in the British Royal Academy; was earning a decent subsistence by his art among the citizens of Boston; had proved, too, that praise was sweet and censure bitter; and was, moreover, sighing for a sight of the Sistine chapel, and talking of the great masters. He thus sets forth his feelings in a letter to Captain Bruce, a gentleman of some taste, who seems to have been an admirer of the works of Copley "I would gladly exchange my situation for the serene climate of Italy, or even that of England; but

what would be the advantage of seeking improvement at such an outlay of time and money. I am now in as good business as the poverty of this place will admit. I make as much as if I were a Raphael or a Correggio; and three hundred guineas a year, my present income, is equal to nine hundred a year in London. With regard to reputation, you are sensible that fame cannot be durable where pictures are confined to sitting rooms, and regarded only for the resemblance they bear to their originals. Were I sure of doing as well in Europe as here, I would not hesitate a moment in my choice; but I might in the experiment waste a thousand pounds and two years of my time, and have to return baffled to America. Then I should have to take my mother with me, who is ailing: she does not, however, seem averse to cross the salt water once more; but my failure would oblige me to recross the sea again. My ambition whispers me to run this risk; and I think the time draws nigh that must determine my future fortune." In something of the same strain and nearly at the same time Copley wrote to his countryman West, then in high favour at the British court. "You will see by the two pictures I have lately sent to your Exhibition, what improvement I may still make, and what encouragement I may reasonably expect. I must beg, however, that you will not suffer your benevolent wishes for my welfare to induce you to think more favourably of my works than they deserve. To give you a further opportunity of judging, I shall send over to your care for the Exhibition the portrait of a