of seventy, nearly the age of Mr. West.  His powers of mind have almost entirely left him; his late paintings are miserable; it is really a lamentable thing that a man should outlive his faculties.  He has been a first-rate painter, as you well know.  I saw at his room some exquisite pieces which he painted twenty or thirty years ago, but his paintings of the last four or five years are very bad.  He was very pleasant, however, and agreeable in his manners.

“Mr. West I visit now and then.  He is very liberal to me and gives me every encouragement.  He is a very friendly man; he talked with me like a father and wished me to call and see him often and be intimate with him.  Age, instead of impairing his faculties, seems rather to have strengthened them, as his last great piece testifies.  He is soon coming out with another which Mr. Allston thinks will far surpass even this last.  The subject is Christ before Pilate.

“I went last week to Burlington House in Piccadilly, about forty-five minutes’ walk, the residence of Lord Elgin, to see some of the ruins of Athens.  Lord Elgin has been at an immense expense in transporting the great collection of splendid ruins, among them some of the original statues of Phidias, the celebrated ancient sculptor.  They are very much mutilated, however, and impaired by time; still there was enough remaining to show the inferiority of all subsequent sculpture.  Even those celebrated works, the Apollo Belvedere, Venus di Medicis, and the rest of those noble statues, must yield to them....

“The cries of London, of which you have doubtless heard, are very annoying to me, as indeed they are to all strangers.  The noise of them is constantly in one’s ears from morning till midnight, and, with the exception of one or two, they all appear to be the cries of distress.  I don’t know how many times I have run to the window expecting to see some poor creature in the agonies of death, but found, to my surprise, that it was only an old woman crying ‘Fardin’ apples,’ or something of the kind.  Hogarth’s picture of the enraged musician will give you an excellent idea of the noise I hear every day under my windows....

“There is a singular custom with respect to knocking at the doors of houses here which is strictly adhered to.  A servant belonging to the house rings the bell only; a strange servant knocks once; a market man or woman knocks once and rings; the penny post knocks twice; and a gentleman or lady half a dozen quick knocks, or any number over two.  A nobleman generally knocks eight or ten tunes very loud.

“The accounts lately received from America look rather gloomy.  They are thought here to wear a more threatening aspect than they have heretofore done.  From my own observation and opportunity of hearing the opinion of the people generally, they are extremely desirous of an amicable adjustment of differences, and seem as much opposed to the idea of war as the better part of the American people....