M. Houdon arrived from France in 1785, in the same ship with Dr. Franklin, and, proceeding to Mount Vernon, remained there two weeks, in which time he modelled the head of the General for his statue which had been ordered by the state of Virginia, and is now in the capitol at Richmond.

Soon after the inauguration, in New York, Edward Savage, a miserable painter, copied the President's features as well as he could, for Harvard College, and his portrait was engraved by young Edwin, in a very creditable manner, though Savage took the credit of its execution on the copper as well as on the canvas. About the same time Madame de Brehan, sister of the French minister, made two small portraits of him, one of which he presented to Mrs. Bingham. The other was engraved in Paris.

Trumbull had painted a head of Washington, from memory, in 1780. In the fall of 1789 he returned from Europe, and soon after executed the portrait which is in the New York City Hall; and in 1792, in Philadelphia, that which is in the gallery at New Haven. The city of Charleston had engaged him to paint a full-length of the President, and he says "he undertook it con amore, meaning to give his military character in the most sublime moment of its exertion - the evening previous to the battle of Princeton, when, viewing the vast superiority of the approaching enemy, and the impossibility of again crossing the Delaware or retreating down the river, he conceived the plan of returning by a night march into the country from which he had just been driven, thus cutting off the enemy's communication and destroying his stores at Brunswick." "I told the President my object," he says; "he entered into it warmly, and, as the work advanced, we talked of the scene, its dangers, its almost desperation." He looked again as if animated by the feelings of the conflict, and the artist pleased himself with a belief that he had transferred to the canvas the lofty expression of the

hero's countenance. But this production did not give satisfaction; the people of Charleston desired a "matter-of-fact likeness, calm, tranquil, peaceful," and Washington sat again, for such a picture. In 1791 and 1792 Trumbull painted a great number of portraits, among which were those of John Jay, Temple Franklin, Mrs. Washington (with a full rosy face, and in a white dress, and cap — very matronly), Nelly Custis, Sophia Chew, Harriet Chew, Cornelia Schuyler (a sister of Mrs. Hamilton, afterward married to Mr. Van Rensselaer), Julia Seymour, who was a celebrated beauty, and two daughters of Jeremiah Wadsworth.

In 1791 Mr. Archibald Robertson, of Aberdeen, arrived in this country, bearing from the Earl of Buchan an introductory letter to Washington, and a box made from the oak tree which sheltered Sir William Wallace, after the battle of Falkirk, which the Goldsmith's Company of Edinburgh had previously presented to the earl. Mr. Robertson painted a very good portrait of the President, which was sent to Scotland, by Mr. Lear, in 1794, and he afterward pursued his profession with success for many years in New York.

Giuseppe Ceracchi, one of the most eminent of contemporary sculptors, had conceived in Rome a design for a monument of the American revolution, and coming to Philadelphia, in 1791, he prepared a model of it, which was much admired. It was to be of statuary marble, one hundred feet high, and to cost but thirty thousand dollars. This sum, however, could not be obtained, and Ceracchi returned to Europe, and was subsequently put to death for an attempt to assassinate Napoleon. While here he executed busts of Washington and many other distinguished characters. He invited Dr. Hugh Williamson to sit for and that one, made himself appear exceedingly ridiculous by the puerile manner in which he declined the compliment.

person

In a collection which I have made of more than sixty engraved

portraits of Washington published during his life-probably the largest collection of the kind in existence-I find three which purport to be from paintings by Charles Wilson Peale. One, painted at Mount Vernon in 1770, was engraved by R. Scott; another, painted in 1780, was engraved in mezzotint by Peale himself; and the third, from a picture dated 1783, was engraved the following year in Paris. Mr. Peale painted fourteen portraits of Washington, but probably not more than four or five of them were from life. His brother James painted two, and his son Rembrandt one.

It has frequently been stated that Mr. Wertmüller, a German, painted a portrait of Washington, from life, in 1783; but there is no evidence that the President ever sat to him.

Gilbert Stuart, after a brilliant career in London, established himself for a short time in New York. Soon after his arrival Judge Cushing, who happened then to be in the city, invited him to tea, and Mrs. Cushing refers to him in her diary as "an extraordinary limner, said to excel by far any other in America." His reputation was so high indeed that everybody who was rich enough to pay his price was anxious to sit to him, and he produced with great rapidity a large number of portraits. But a desire to paint Washington had been one of the chief causes of his return to the United States, and he was impatient to begin his work. His first picture was unsuccessful, but the second was in every respect masterly, and the artist and the subject were equally pleased with it. Only the head was finished. From this he made more than twenty copies. Of his four or five full-lengths, the first was sent by Mr. Bingham* as

* Before sitting for this picture Washington wrote to Stuart the following note: "Sir: I am under promise to Mrs. Bingham to sit for you to-morrow at nine o'clock; and wishing to know if it is convenient to you that I should do so, and whether it shall be at your own house, (as she talked of the state house,) I send this note to you to ask information. I am, sir, your obedient servant, GEO. WASHINGTON. Monday evening, 11th April, 1796." He sat at Stuart's own house, and was accompanied several times by Harriet Chew, (afterwards Mrs. Carroll,) whose conversation he said should give his face its most agreeable expression.

a present to Lord Lansdowne, and the last is now in Fanueil Hall in Boston.

A bust of Washington was modelled by a Mr. Gullagher, of Boston, in 1789; a much better one was produced by Mr. Eccleston, of Virginia, in 1796. The last portrait of him was in crayon, by Sharpless, drawn the same year.

Among the miniature painters of the time of Washington Benjamin Trott held a conspicuous rank; but no artist in this department is deserving of comparison with Edward Malbone, for propriety and grace, or the details of finished execution. "The Hours" show what capacities he had for composition, but his vocation was for portraiture, and notwithstanding the depreciation of this branch of art by its professors or by others, "the power of animating and dignifying the countenance, and impressing on it the on it the appearance of wisdom and virtue, requires," as Sir Joshua Reynolds well observes, "a nobleness of conception which goes beyond any thing in the mere exhibition of even the most perfect forms." When Mr. Monroe was in London, on his way to France, as minister to that country, Mr. West said to him, "I have seen a picture painted by a young man of the name of Malbone, which no man in England could excel;" and other critics, of authority as high as that of the President of the Royal Academy, have declared that there are even now in the most famous collections no miniatures comparable to those of our ingenious countryman, whose works continue to be cherished among the choicest treasures of the few families who employed him at the close of the last and the beginning of the present century. The beauties of the time of Washington were for the most part somewhat faded before Malbone was fairly started in his career; but this volume is adorned by an engraving from one of his works, alike remarkable for fidelity and a simple and chaste elegance rarely displayed in such performances.

THE CONCLUSION.

I.

As the second term of his administration drew near its end, many of the friends of Washington urged him to continue for another period of four years at the head of affairs; but it was impossible to change his purpose of retiring to private life. He was deeply wounded by the profligacy of his enemies, and on the twelfth of June, 1796, wrote to Colonel Humphreys, who was still in Portugal: "The gazettes will give you a pretty good idea of the state of politics and parties in this country, and will show you at the same time, if Bache's Aurora is among them, in what manner I am attacked for persevering steadily in measures which to me appear necessary to preserve us, during the conflicts of belligerent powers, in a state of tranquillity. But these attacks, unjust and unpleasant as they are, will occasion no change in my conduct, nor will they produce any other effect in my mind than to increase the solicitude which long since has taken fast hold of my heart, to enjoy in the shades of retirement the consolation of believing that I have rendered to my country every service to which my abilities were competent-not from pecuniary or ambitious motives, nor from a desire to provide for any men farther than their intrinsic merit entitled them, and surely not with a view of bringing my own rela