hem to excellence," and West desires his
friends in Philadelphia to procure for the young man the means of
studying another year. That rising artist, who had early felt the
generous assistance of Benjamin West, was Thomas Sully, who had the
honor, in 1837-8, of painting the scene of Queen Victoria's coronation,
and his daughter, to save her Majesty fatigue, stood for her, wearing
the royal robes.

John Trumbull, son of "Brother Jonathan" the patriot, who painted the
famous "Declaration of Independence," was imprisoned for treason in
London, and was only released by Benjamin West, to whom he had been
introduced by Franklin, becoming his surety. Gilbert Stuart, greatest of
American portrait painters, who has graven the face of Washington upon
our memories, learned his art and received his earliest encouragement in
the English home of Benjamin West. It is a matter of interesting and
singular memory that a Boston boy, John Singleton Copley, sent
anonymously to West, in 1760, a portrait which at once attracted
attention. It was "The Boy and the Flying Squirrel," the boy
representing Copley's half-brother, Henry Pelham. Through West's
influence the picture was exhibited at Somerset House. Through West
again, Copley was elected a fellow of the Society of Artists of Great
Britain. When he crossed the ocean to make his home near West, he took
with him his Boston-born son, John Singleton, Jr., who became in 1827,
the year that the _Port Folio_ suspended, Lord Chancellor of England,
and was raised to the peerage as Baron Lyndhurst. To Lyndhurst, as the
greatest of orators, Lord Lytton dedicated his _St. Stephen's_.

The leading article of the _Port Folio_ of May 28, 1803, is devoted to
young Leigh Hunt, and treats him as an American poet, and assures the
public that he "is a deserving object of patronage." Again, in June 11,
1803, some sonnets and odes are quoted from Hunt's _Juvenilia_, Hunt
being then a lad of 19 years, and the author is said to be a "blossom
from our own garden." Although the editor lays claim to Leigh Hunt as a
Philadelphian and to his works as American, he is advised to abide in
London: "Let him remain in London, 'the metropolis of the civilized
world,' and remember with the judicious Sancho that St. Peter is very
well at Rome.... It affords the editor the purest pleasure to have it in
his power to advance the claims of a child of genius, a nephew of Sir
Benjamin West, an honor to that country from which he