ters, for whom the new country was not yet a quite satisfactory
place, displayed perhaps the strongest homing tendency. Copley, West,
and Stuart, for instance, all American born, had to seek an older home
of art. West returned in youth to England, and Copley in early manhood;
there they made their careers, there they lived and died; while Stuart,
after passing fifteen years in Europe, came back to settle in America.
But none of these artists quite severed himself from his native
country. American themes served each of them for some of his best known
works: as in Stuart's famous "Washington," West's "Death of General
Wolfe," and Copley's first historical picture, so called, the "Youth
Rescued from a Shark."[4]

[4] Now, I believe, in the Boston Athenaeum.

There, too, was Copley's son, born, like his father, in New England.
In 1774 he was taken to London, where he too made his career, a
distinguished one; for the Boston boy lived to become Baron Lyndhurst
and Lord Chancellor. But as the eminent nobleman to be, at the time of
his demigration, was but two years old, it is difficult to point out
any traits of distinctively American statesmanship in his career.

And that other American nobleman, Count Rumford, of whom Mr. Ellis has
recently written the first good biography--his was a notable case of
birth away from home. It is a little odd to think of the famous Count
Rumford, Franklin's compeer in genius, and born but a few miles from
Franklin's birthplace, as plain Benjamin Thompson of North Woburn,
Massachusetts. His parents were plain New England people, but he was
ambitious, and had a handsome person; he had, too, what his neighbors
might have called "uppish" ways; for he pretended to peculiar
knowledge, and was always making strange researches and experiments; in
short, I fear that he was not quite enough of a democrat to suit his
neighbors. There was a distinction about him that they did not like; he
was too original in his character and tastes; and consequently he was a
marked man in that community. His fortunes seemed well enough, I
presume, when, at twenty, he quitted school-teaching to marry a rich
widow, thirteen years older than himself, Sarah Rolfe of Concord, New
Hampshire; appearing on the wedding day, it is noted, in a splendid
scarlet suit, to the astonishment and scandal of the young man's
friends. But that was in 1772, and his troubles were not far ahead. At
the outbreak of the colonial quarrel he