unavailing, and have separated and formed a new academy to be called, probably, the National Academy of the Arts of Design.  I am at its head, but the cares and responsibility which devolve on me in consequence are more than a balance for the honor.  The battle is yet to be fought for the need of public favor, and were it not that the entire and perfect justness of our cause is clear to me in every point of view, I should retire from a contest which would merely serve to rouse up all the ‘old Adam’ to no profit; but the cause of the artists seems, under Providence, to be, in some degree, confided to me, and I cannot shrink from the cares and troubles at present put upon me.  I have gone forward thus far, asking direction from above, and, in looking around me, I feel that I am in the path of duty.  May I be kept in it and be preserved from the temptations, the various and multiplied and complicated temptations, to which I know I shall be exposed.  In every step thus far I feel an approving conscience; there is none I could wish to retrace....

“I fear you will think I have but few thoughts for you all at home, and my dear little ones in particular.  I do think of them, though, very often, with many a longing to have a home for them under a parent’s roof, and all my efforts now are tending distantly to that end; but when I shall ever have a home of my own, or whether it will ever be, I know not.  The necessity for a second connection on their account seems pressing, but I cannot find my heart ready for it.  I am occasionally rallied on the subject, but the suggestion only reminds me of her I have lost, and a tear is quite as ready to appear as a smile; or, if I can disguise it, I feel a pang within that shows me the wound is not yet healed.  It is eleven months since she has gone, but it seems but yesterday.”

“April 18, 1826. I don’t know but you will think I have forgotten how to write letters, and I believe this is the first I have written for six weeks.

“The pressure of my lectures became very great towards the close of them, and I was compelled to bend my whole attention to their completion.  I did not expect, when I delivered my first, that I should be able to give more than two, but the importance of going through seemed greater as I advanced, and I was strengthened to accomplish the whole number, and, if I can judge from various indications, I think I have been successful.  My audience, consisting of the most fashionable and literary society in the city, regularly increased at each successive lecture, and at the last it was said that I had the largest audience ever assembled in the room.

“I am now engaged on Lafayette in expectation of completing it for our exhibition in May, after which time I hope I shall be able to see you for a day or two in New Haven.  I long to see you all, and those dear children often make me feel anxious, and I am often tempted to break away and have a short look at them, but I am tied down here and cannot move at present.  All that I am doing has some reference to their interest; they are constantly on my mind.