“There can now be no French party.  I wish very much to know what effect this series of good news will have at home.  I congratulate you as well as all other good people on the providential events which have lately happened; they must produce great changes with us; I hope it will be for the best.

“I am in excellent health, and am painting away; I am making studies for the large picture I contemplate for next year.  It will be as large, I think, as Mr. Allston’s famous one, which was ten feet by fourteen.”

It can hardly be wondered at that the parents should have been somewhat anxious, when we learn from letters of June, 1814, that they had not heard from their son for seven months.  They were greatly relieved when letters did finally arrive, and they rejoiced in his success and in the hope of a universal peace, which should enable their sons “to act their part on the stage of life in a calmer period of the world.”

His mother keeps urging him to send some of his paintings home, as they wish to judge of his improvement, having, as yet, received nothing but the small pen-and-ink portrait of himself, which they do not think a very good likeness.  She also emphatically discourages any idea of patronage from America, owing to the hard times brought on by the war, and the father tells his son that he will endeavor to send him one thousand dollars more, which must suffice for the additional year’s study and the expenses of the journey home.

It is small wonder that the three sons always manifested the deepest veneration and affection for their parents, for seldom has there been seen as great devotion and self-sacrifice, and seldom were three sons more worthy of it.  Sidney was at this time studying law at Litchfield, Connecticut, and Richard was attending the Theological Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts.  Both became eminent in after life, though, curiously enough, neither in the law nor in the ministry.  But we shall have occasion to treat more specifically of this later on.  The three brothers were devotedly attached to each other to the very end of their long lives, and were mutually helpful as their lives now diverged and now came together again.

The next letter from Morse to his parents, written on June 15, 1814, gives a further account of the great people who were at that time in London:—­

“I expected at this time to have been in Bristol with Mr. and Mrs. Allston, who are now there, but the great fetes in honor of the peace, and the visit of the allied sovereigns, have kept me in London till all is over.  There are now in London upward of twenty foreign princes; also the great Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia.  A week ago yesterday they arrived in town, and, contrary to expectation, came in a very private manner.  I went to see their entree, but was disappointed with the rest of the people, for the Emperor Alexander, disliking all show and parade, came in a private carriage and took an indirect route here.