“We exceedingly rejoice in all your success, and hope you will persevere.  Remember, my son, it is easier to get a reputation than to keep it unspotted in the midst of so much pollution as we are surrounded by....

“C.  Dexter thanks you for your attention to her request as it respects Southey’s likeness.  She does not wish you to take too much pains and trouble to get it, but she, I know, would be greatly pleased if you should send her one of him.  If you should get acquainted with him, inform him that a very sensible, fine young lady in America requested it (but don’t tell him her name) from having read his works.”

In a long letter of August 10 and 26, 1813, after again giving free rein to his political feelings, he returns to the subject of his art:—­

“Mr. West promised me a note to you, but he is an old man and very forgetful, and I suppose he has forgotten it.  I don’t wish to remind him of it directly, but, if in the course of conversation I can contrive to mention it, I will....

“With respect to returning home next summer, Mr. Allston and Mr. West think it would be an injury to me.  Mr. Allston says I ought not to return till I am a painter.  I long to return as much as you can wish to have me, but, if you can spare me a little longer, I should wish it.  I abide your decision, however, completely.  Mr. Allston will write you fully on this subject, and I will endeavor to persuade Mr. West also to do it.

“France I could not, at present, visit with advantage; that is to say for, perhaps, a year.  Mr. Allston thinks I ought to be previously well grounded in the principles of the English school to resist the corruptions of the French school; for they are corrupt in the principles of painting, as in religion and everything else; but, when well grounded in the good principles of this school, I could study and select the few beauties of the French without being in danger of following their many errors.  The Louvre also would, in about a year, be of the greatest advantage to me, and also the fine works in Italy....

“Mama has amused me very much in her letter where she writes on politics.  She says that, next to changing one’s religion, she would dislike a man for changing his politics.  Mama, perhaps, is not aware that she would in this way shut the door completely to conviction in anything.  It would imply that, because a man is educated in error, he must forever live in error.  I know exactly how mama feels; she thinks, as I did when at home, that it was impossible for the Federalists to be in the wrong; but, as all men are fallible, I think they may stand a chance of being wrong as well as any other class of people....

“Mama thinks my ‘error’ arises from wrong information.  I will ask mama which of us is likely to get at the truth; I, who am in England and can see and hear all their motives for acting as they have done; or mama, who gets her information from the Federal papers, second-hand, with numerous additions and improvements made to answer party purposes, distorted and misrepresented?