from London on December 22, 1814:--

MY DEAR PARENTS,--I arrived yesterday from Bristol, where I have been for
several months past endeavoring to make a little in the way of my
profession, but have completely failed, owing to several causes.

First, the total want of anything like partiality for the fine arts in
that place; the people there are but a remove from brutes. A "Bristol
hog" is as proverbial in this country as a "Charlestown gentleman" is in
Boston. Their whole minds are absorbed in trade; barter and gain and
interest are all they understand. If I could have painted a picture for
half a guinea by which they could have made twenty whilst I starved, _I
could have starved_.

Secondly, the virulence of national prejudice which rages now with
tenfold acrimony. They no longer despise, they hate, the Americans. The
battle on Champlain and before Flattsburgh has decided the business; the
moans and bewailings for this business are really, to an American, quite
comforting after their arrogant boasting of reducing us to unconditional
submission.

Is it strange that I should feel a little the effects of this universal
hatred? I have felt it, and I have left Bristol after six months' perfect
neglect. After having been invited there with promises of success, I have
had the mortification to leave it without having, from Bristol, a single
commission. More than that, and by far the worst, if I have not gone back
in my art these six months, I have at least stood still, and to me this
is the most trying reflection of all. I have been immured in the
paralyzing atmosphere of trade till my mind was near partaking the
infection. I have been listening to the grovelling, avaricious devotees
of mammon, whose souls are narrowed to the studious contemplation of a
hard-earned shilling, whose leaden imaginations never soared above the
prospect of a good bargain, and whose _summum bonum_ is the inspiring
idea of counting a hundred thousand: I say I have been listening to these
miserly beings till the idea did not seem so repugnant of lowering my
noble art to a trade, of painting for money, of degrading myself and the
soul-enlarging art which I possess, to the narrow idea of merely getting
money.

Fie on myself! I am ashamed of myself; no, never will I degrade myself by
making a trade of a profession. If I cannot live a gentleman, I will
starve a gentleman. But I will dismiss this unpleasant subject, the
particulars of which I can bet