medal offered by the Royal Academy for the best historical painting, and took for his subject, 'The Judgment of Jupiter in the case of Apollo, Marpessa, and Idas.' The work was finished to the satisfaction of West, but the painter was summoned home. He was still, in part at least, depending on his father, and had been abroad a year longer than the three at first intended. During this time he had been obliged to pinch himself in a thousand ways in order to eke out his modest allowance. 'My drink is water, porter being too expensive,' he wrote to his parents. 'I have had no new clothes for nearly a year. My best are threadbare, and my shoes are out at the toes. My stockings all want to see my mother, and my hat is hoary with age.'
Mr. West recommended him to stay, since the rules of the competition required the winner to receive the prize in person. But after trying in vain to get this regulation waived, he left for America with his picture, having, a few days prior to his departure, dined with Mr. Wilberforce as the guns of Hyde Park were signalling the victory of Waterloo.
Arriving in Boston on October 18, he lost no time in renting a studio. His fame had preceded him, and he became the lion of society. His 'Judgment of Jupiter' was exhibited in the town, and people flocked to see it. But no one offered to buy it. If the line of high art he had chosen had not supported him in England, it was tantamount to starvation in the rawer atmosphere of America. Even in Boston, mellowed though it was by culture, the classical was at a discount. Almost penniless, and fretting under his disappointment, he went to Concord, New Hampshire, and contrived to earn a living by painting cabinet portraits. Was this the end of his ambitious dreams?
Money was needful to extricate him from this
