resources existed for the practice of his art: for so simple and primitive were the manners and domestic accommodations of the little society of Friends in which he had been brought up, that it is averred he had never at this time seen either a painting or an engraving. At last a party of Indians came to visit Springfield, and were shewn some of the boy's performances. They were not very unlike the delineations they themselves were in the habit of making; and these children of the woods were delighted with such evidences of a taste kindred to their own. But their greater experience had given them some advantages over the young prodigy. In particular, they were possessed of colours with which he had no acquaintance, being in the custom of using both a red and a yellow ochre. These, therefore, they taught him the method of preparing; and his mother, to complete his assortment of these new auxiliaries, presented him with a piece of indigo. Still he had no pencil; but, having been told by some one that pencils were made in Europe of camel's hair, his ingenuity soon found out a tolerable substitute for this material. Seizing upon a black cat, which was kept in the house, he extracted the requisite quantity of hairs from her tail for his first brush, and afterwards pillaged her back for others.

About a year after this, a Mr. Pennington, a merchant of Philadelphia, chanced to pay old West a visit, and Benjamin's pictures were shewn to him. Pennington knew a little more of such matters than the villagers of Springfield, and was so much struck with the merit of the boy's performances, that he promised to send him a box of paints as soon as he got back to the city. The box, accordingly, soon made its appearance, and was opened with eager expectation. To an assortment of colours, oils, and

pencils, the care of the good merchant had added several pieces of canvas prepared for being painted upon, and half a dozen engravings. Benjamin was perfectly enraptured. The true nature of the prints he did not suspect at first, the existence of such an art as that of engraving never having entered his imagination. But, of course, he thought them the finest things he had ever seen in his life. During the remainder of the evening he scarcely lifted his eye from his box and its contents. Sometimes he almost doubted that he was actually master of so precious a treasure, and would take it in his hand merely to be assured that it was real. Even after going to sleep he awoke more than once during the night, and anxiously put out his hand to the box, which he had placed by his bedside, half afraid that he might find his riches only a dream. Next morning he rose at break of day, and, carrying his colours and canvas to the garret, proceeded to work. Every thing else was now unheeded. Even his attendance at school was given up. As soon as he got out of the sight of his father and mother he stole to his garret, and there passed the hours in a world of his own. At last, after he had been absent from school some days, the master called at his father's house to inquire what had become of him. This led to the discovery of his secret occupation. His mother, proceeding to the garret, found the truant; but so much was she astonished and delighted by the creation of his pencil which also met her view when she entered the apartment, that, instead of rebuking him, she could only take him in her arms, and kiss him with transports of affection. He had made a new composition of his own out of two of the engravings, which he had coloured from his own feeling of the proper tints; and so perfect did the performance already appear to his mother, that, although

half the canvas yet remained uncovered, she would not suffer him to add another touch to what he had done. Mr. Galt, West's biographer, saw the picture in the state in which it had thus been left, sixty-seven years afterwards; and the artist himself used to acknowledge that in none of his subsequent efforts had he been able to excel some of the touches of invention in this his first essay.

Some time after this, Pennington paid them a second visit at Springfield, and, pleased with the progress the young painter had made since he had provided him with the proper materials of his art, took him with him to Philadelphia. Here he met a brother artist, a Mr. Williams, whose pictures, the first he had seen except his own, moved him even to tears. Williams lent him, also, Fresnoy's Poem on Painting, and Richardson's Essay; and these works contributed not a little to feed his enthusiasm. He returned to Springfield more in love with painting than ever; and so contagious was his ardour, that even his schoolfellows, with hardly an exception, began to follow his example, and no other amusement was minded but drawing on the walls with chalk and ochre. West used to assert that many of the performances of these juvenile amateurs were such as would have done no discredit to the students of an academy. But no one of them, it would seem, had the same deep-seated love of art as himself; for, when the pastime had lasted its season, it was forsaken and forgotten, he alone looking forward to his present pursuit as the occupation of his life, and being resolved to sacrifice everything else for its sake.

He had as yet, however, made no money by his art, not so much even as to enable him to purchase colours and canvas. But one of the neighbours, a cabinet-maker, kindly gave him some smoothed

boards, and on these he used to draw his sketches, with ink, chalk, and charcoal. A Mr. Wayne, another neighbour, calling one day at his father's, was shewn these performances, and admired them so much that he took a few of them away with him to shew to his family or his friends. Next day he returned, and, having resolved by this time to keep the pictures, gave the boy a dollar for each. About the same time a Dr. Jonathan Moris made him a present of a few dollars to buy paints with. These encouragements were invaluable to him at the time; and West never afterwards forgot his first patrons. It does not appear that his father, either at this or any other time, gave him any assistance to enable him to pursue his favourite art, although the family seem to have been rather in comfortable circumstances. If the old Quaker continued to look forward to his son becoming a great man, as the preacher had foretold he would, he seems to have trusted entirely to the efficacy of his reverend friend's prediction to bring about that result. Notwithstanding, however, the pleasure he could not but feel in the evidences of uncommon talent which the boy continued to give by the productions of his pencil, he probably had considerable misgivings, arising from his peculiar religious opinions, as to the lawfulness of the art itself, and wished that the young prodigy would choose another road to the distinction destined for him. Not such were Benjamin's own notions. Ever since reading Fresnoy and Richardson, the profession of a painter had seemed to him the most honourable that man could follow. He had also already got possessed by the prophecy that had been uttered in his favour; and was so persuaded of his future greatness that, finding himself upon one occasion mounted, for a holiday trip, on the same horse with a schoolfellow, who was imprudent enough to confess, in the course

of their conversation, that his father intended to make him a tailor, a trade which, he added, he thought a very good one, West dismounted immediately, exclaiming that no one who meant to be a tailor should ride with him, who was to be a painter, -the companion, as he expressed it, of kings and emperors. This conviction of his high destiny, although it was only in his boyhood that it occasioned such ebullitions as this, never forsook the artist; and, doubtless, contributed somewhat to carry him buoyantly forward through the strange circumstances of his commencing career.

The peculiarity of his situation, indeed, consisted chiefly in this, that, young as he was, he was left solely to the strength of his own enthusiasm to prompt and sustain him in every effort he made to advance himself in the line he had resolved to pursue. He had no sufferings to endure from want of bread, or extreme poverty, in any of those shapes in which it has so often pressed to the earth the young aspirant after knowledge; but, on the other hand, he had no one to instruct him, or even to urge him to seek instruction. He had everything to do for himself, and of himself. The other boys, we have seen, his companions, who also at one time took a fancy to painting, had none of them steadiness or perseverance to pursue the art beyond a few weeks or months. He had no greater external advantages than they had, yet he alone became a painter. He had that within himself which they wanted-that ardour and constancy in the prosecution of his object which has sustained the exertions of all those whose names are to be reckoned with his in the honourable catalogue of self-educated and self-raised men, and without which, indeed, there cannot be achieved anything great or anything worthy. West's history has been described as