ted by his advice and encouragement.

That he had no ambition other than his art at this period we may learn
from a letter he wrote to his mother in 1812.

My passion for my art [he wrote] is so firmly rooted that I
am confident no human power could destroy it. The more I study
the greater I think is its claim to the appellation divine. I
am now going to begin a picture of the death of Hercules, the
figure to be large as life.

When he had completed this picture to his own satisfaction, he showed
it to West. "Go on and finish it," was West's comment. "But it is
finished," said Morse. "No, no. See here, and here, and here are
places you can improve it." Morse went to work upon his painting
again, only to meet the same comment when he again showed it to West.
This happened again and again. When the youth had finally brought it
to a point where West was convinced it was the very best Morse could
do he had learned a lesson in thoroughness and painstaking attention
to detail that he never forgot.

That he might have a model for his painting Morse had molded a figure
of Hercules in clay. At the advice of West he entered the cast in a
competition for a prize in sculpture, with the result that he received
the prize and a gold medal for his work. He then plunged into the
competition for a prize and medal offered by the Royal Academy for the
best historical painting. His subject was, "The Judgment of Jupiter
in the Case of Apollo, Marpessa, and Idas." Though he completed the
picture to the satisfaction of West, Morse was not able to remain in
London and enter it in the competition. The rules required that the
artist be present in person if he was to receive the prize, but Morse
was forced to return to America. He had been in England for four
years--a year longer than had originally been planned for him--and he
was out of funds, and his parents could support him no longer.

Morse lived in London during the War of 1812, but seems to have
suffered no annoyance other than that of poverty, which the war
intensified by raising the prices of food as well as his necessary
artist's materials to an almost prohibitive figure. The last of the
Napoleonic wars was also in progress. News of the battle of Waterloo
reached London but a short time before Morse sailed for America. It
required two days for the news to reach the English capital. The young
American, whose inability to sell his paintings was driving him from
L