To form a correct estimate of Haydon it is necessary to read his autobiography. This is one of the most natural books ever written, full of various and abundant power, and fascinating to the reader. The author seems to have daguerreotyped his feelings and sentiments without restraint as they rose in his mind, and his portrait stands in these volumes limned to the life by his own hand. His love for his art was both a passion and a principle. He found patrons difficult to manage; and, not having the tact to lead them gently, he tried to drive them fiercely. He failed, abused patrons and patronage, and intermingled talk of the noblest independence with acts not always dignified. He was self-willed to perversity, but his perseverance was such as is seldom associated with so much vehemence and passion. With a large fund of genuine self-reliance he combined a considerable measure of vanity. To the last he believed in his own powers and in the ultimate triumph of art. In taste he was deficient, at least as concerned himself. Hence the tone of self-assertion which he assumed in his advertisements, catalogues and other appeals to the public. He proclaimed himself the apostle and martyr of high art, and, not without some justice, he believed himself to have on that account a claim on the sympathy and support of the nation. It must be confessed that he often tested severely those whom he called his friends. Every reader of his autobiography will be struck at the frequency and fervour of the short prayers interspersed throughout the work. Haydon had an overwhelming sense of a personal, overruling and merciful providence, which influenced his relations with his family, and to some extent with the world. His conduct as a husband and father entitles him to the utmost sympathy. In art his powers and attainments were undoubtedly very great, although his actual performances mostly fall short of the faculty which was manifestly within him; his general range and force of mind were also most remarkable, and would have qualified him to shine in almost any path of intellectual exertion or of practical work. His eager and combative character was partly his enemy; but he had other enemies actuated by motives as unworthy as his own were always high-pitched and on abstract grounds laudable. Of his three great works—the “Solomon,” the “Entry into Jerusalem” and the “Lazarus”—the second has generally been regarded as the finest. The “Solomon” is also a very admirable production, showing his executive power at its loftiest, and of itself enough to place Haydon at the head of British historical painting in his own time. The “Lazarus” (which belongs to the National Gallery, but is not now on view there) is a more unequal performance, and in various respects open to criticism and censure; yet the head of Lazarus is so majestic and impressive that, if its author had done nothing else, we must still pronounce him a potent pictorial genius.
The chief authorities for the life of Haydon are Life of B. R. Haydon, from his Autobiography and Journals, edited and compiled by Tom Taylor (3 vols., 1853); and B. R. Haydon’s Correspondence and Table Talk, with a memoir by his son, F. W. Haydon (2 vols., 1876). (W. M. R.)
HAYES, RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD (1822–1893), nineteenth president of the United States, was born in Delaware,
Ohio, on the 4th of October 1822. He received his first education
in the common schools, graduated in 1842 at Kenyon College,
Gambier, Ohio, and was a student at the law school of Harvard
University from 1843 until his graduation in 1845. He was
admitted to the bar in 1845, and practised law, first at Lower
Sandusky (now Fremont), and then at Cincinnati, where he won
a very respectable standing, and in 1858–1861 served as city
solicitor. In politics he was at first an anti-slavery Whig and
then from the time of its organization in 1854 until his death
was a member of the Republican party. In December 1852 he
married Lucy Ware Webb of Chillicothe, Ohio, who survived
him. After the breaking out of the Civil War the governor of
Ohio, on the 7th of June 1861, appointed him a major of a
volunteer regiment, and in July he was sent to western Virginia
for active service. He served throughout the war, distinguished
himself particularly at South Mountain, Winchester, Fisher’s Hill
and Cedar Creek, and by successive promotions became a
brigadier-general of volunteers and, by brevet, a major-general
of volunteers. While still in the field he was elected a member
of the National House of Representatives, and took his seat in
December 1865. He was re-elected in 1866, and supported the
reconstruction measures advocated by his party. From 1868 to
1872 he was governor of Ohio. In 1873 he removed from
Cincinnati to Fremont, his intention being to withdraw from
public life; but in 1875 the Republican party in Ohio once more
selected him as its candidate for the governorship. He accepted
the nomination with great reluctance. The Democrats adopted
a platform declaring in favour of indefinitely enlarging the
volume of the irredeemable paper currency which the Civil War
had left behind it. Hayes stoutly advocated the speediest
practicable resumption of specie payments, and carried the
election. The “sound-money campaign” in Ohio having
attracted the attention of the whole country, Hayes was marked
out as a candidate for the presidency, and he obtained the
nomination of the Republican National Convention of 1876, his
chief competitor being James G. Blaine. The candidate of the
Democratic party, Samuel J. Tilden, by his reputation as a statesman
and a reformer of uncommon ability, drew many Republican
votes. An excited controversy having arisen about the result of
the balloting in the states of South Carolina, Florida, Oregon
and Louisiana, the two parties in Congress in order to allay a
crisis dangerous to public peace agreed to pass an act referring
all contested election returns to an extraordinary commission,
called the “Electoral Commission” (q.v.), which decided each
contest by eight against seven votes in favour of the Republican
candidates. Hayes was accordingly on the 2nd of March 1877
declared duly elected.
During his administration President Hayes devoted his efforts mainly to civil service reform, resumption of specie payments and the pacification of the Southern States, recently in rebellion. In order to win the co-operation of the white people in the South in maintaining peace and order, he put himself in communication with their leaders. He then withdrew the Federal troops which since the Civil War had been stationed at the southern State capitals. An end was thus made of the “carpet-bag governments” conducted by Republican politicians from the North, some of which were very corrupt, and had been upheld mainly by the Federal forces. This policy found much favour with the people generally, but displeased many of the Republican politicians, because it loosened the hold of the Republican party upon the Southern States. Though it did not secure to the negroes sufficient protection in the exercise of their political rights, it did much to extinguish the animosities still existing between the two sections of the Union and to promote the material prosperity of the South. President Hayes endeavoured in vain to induce Congress to appropriate money for a Civil Service Commission; and whenever he made an effort to restrict the operation of the traditional “spoils system,” he met the strenuous opposition of a majority of the most powerful politicians of his party. Nevertheless the system of competitive examinations for appointments was introduced in some of the great executive departments in Washington, and in the custom-house and the post-office in New York. Moreover, he ordered that “no officer should be required or permitted to take part in the management of political organizations, caucuses, conventions or election campaigns,” and that “no assessment for political purposes on officers or subordinates should be allowed”; and he removed from their offices the heads of the post-office in St Louis and of the custom-house in New York—influential party managers—on the ground that they had misused their official positions for partisan ends. In New York the three men removed were Chester A. Arthur, the collector; Alonzo B. Cornell, the naval officer of the Port; and George H. Sharpe, the surveyor of the customs. While these measures were of limited scope and effect, they served greatly to facilitate the more extensive reform of the civil service which subsequently took place, though at the same time they alienated a powerful faction of the Republican party in New York under the leadership of Roscoe Conkling. Although the resumption of specie payments had been provided for, to begin at a given
