s parents, children of daily
anxiety and prayer, dedicated to God from their birth and trained to all
human appearance 'in the way they should go,' should yet seem to falsify
the promise that 'they should not depart from it.' It is a subject too
deep to fathom.

"... It is my daily, I may say hourly, thought, certainly my constant
wakeful thought at night, how to resolve the question: 'Why has God seen
fit so abundantly to shower his earthly blessings upon me in my latter
days, to bless me with every desirable comfort, while so many so much
more deserving (in human eyes at least) are deprived of all comfort and
have heaped upon them sufferings and troubles in every shape?'"

The memory of his student days in London was always dear to him, and on
January 4, 1865, he writes to William Cullen Bryant:--

"I have this moment received a printed circular respecting the proposed
purchase of the portrait of Allston by Leslie to be presented to the
National Academy of Design.

"There are associations in my mind with those two eminent and beloved
names which appeal too strongly to me to be resisted. Now I have a favor
to ask which I hope will not be denied. It is that I may be allowed to
present to the Academy that portrait in my own name. You can appreciate
the arguments which have influenced my wishes in this respect. Allston
was more than any other person my master in art. Leslie was my life-long
cherished friend and fellow pupil, whom I loved as a brother. We all
lived together for years in the closest intimacy and in the same house.
Is there not then a fitness that the portrait of the master by one
distinguished pupil should be presented by the surviving pupil to the
Academy over which he presided in its infancy, as well as assisted in its
birth, and, although divorced from Art, cannot so easily be divorced from
the memories of an intercourse with these distinguished friends, an
intercourse which never for one moment suffered interruption, even from a
shadow of estrangement?"

It is needless to say that this generous offer was accepted, and Morse at
the same time presented to the Academy the brush which Allston was using
when stricken with his fatal illness.

As his means permitted he made generous donations to charities and to
educational institutions, and on May 20, 1865, he endowed by the gift of
$10,000 a lectureship in the Union Theological Seminary, making the
following request in the letter which accompanied it:-