e classed with the founders of the
modern naturalistic school. This conscientious and healthy
interpretation, to which the artist remained faithful, without any
important change, to the end of an unusually long and laborious career,
attracted those minds which aspired to be bold, and won over those which
were moderate. Clays soon took his place among the most famous Belgian
painters of his generation, and his pictures, sold at high prices, are
to be seen in most public and private galleries. We may mention, among
others, "The Beach at Ault," "Boats in a Dutch Port," and "Dutch Boats
in the Flushing Roads," the last in the National Gallery, London. In the
Brussels gallery are "The Port of Antwerp," "Coast near Ostend," and a
"Calm on the Scheldt"; in the Antwerp museum, "The Meuse at Dordrecht";
in the Pinakothek at Munich, "The Open North Sea"; in the Metropolitan
Museum of Fine Arts, New York, "The Festival of the Freedom of the
Scheldt at Antwerp in 1863"; in the palace of the king of the Belgians,
"Arrival of Queen Victoria at Ostend in 1857"; in the Bruges academy,
"Port of Feirugudo, Portugal." Clays was a member of several Academies,
Belgian and foreign, and of the Order of Leopold, the Legion of Honour,
&c.

See Camille Lemonnier, _Histoire des Beaux-Arts_ (Brussels, 1887).
(O. M.*)

CLAYTON, JOHN MIDDLETON (1796-1856), American politician, was born in
Dagsborough, Sussex county, Delaware, on the 24th of July 1796. He came
of an old Quaker family long prominent in the political history of
Delaware. He graduated at Yale in 1815, and in 1819 began to practise
law at Dover, Delaware, where for a time he was associated with his
cousin, Thomas Clayton (1778-1854), subsequently a United States senator
and chief-justice of the state. He soon gained a large practice. He
became a member of the state House of Representatives in 1824, and from
December 1826 to October 1828 was secretary of state of Delaware. In
1829, by a combination of anti-Jackson forces in the state legislature,
he was elected to the United States Senate. Here his great oratorical
gifts gave him a high place as one of the ablest and most eloquent
opponents of the administration. In 1831 he was a member of the Delaware
constitutional convention, and in 1835 he was returned to the Senate as
a Whig, but resigned in the following year. In 1837-1839 he was chief
justice of Delaware. In 1845 he again entered the Senate, where he
opposed the anne