the care of
stores, and, besides, we think it will be more economical and the walk
will be beneficial." While success in his profession seemed now assured,
and while orders poured in so fast that he gladly assisted some of his
less fortunate brother artists by referring his would-be patrons to them,
he also took a deep interest in the general artistic movement of the
time.

He was, by nature, intensely enthusiastic, and his strong personality
ever impressed itself on individuals and communities with which he came
in contact. He was a born leader of men, and, like so many other leaders,
often so forgetful of self in his eager desire for the general good as to
seriously interfere with his material prosperity. This is what happened
to him now, for he gave so liberally of himself in the formation of a new
artistic body in New York, and in the preparation of lectures, that he
encroached seriously on time which might have been more lucratively
employed.

His brother Sidney comments on this in a letter to the other brother
Richard: "Finley is well and in good spirits, though not advancing very
rapidly in his business. He is full of the Academy and of his lectures--
can hardly talk on any other subject. I despair of ever seeing him rich
or even at ease in his pecuniary circumstances from efforts of his own,
though able to do it with so little effort. But he may be in a better
way, perhaps, of getting a fortune in his present course than he would be
in the laborious path which we are too apt to think is the only road to
wealth and ultimate ease."

We have seen that Morse was one of the founders of an academy of art in
Charleston, South Carolina, and we have seen that, after his departure
from that city, this academy languished and died. Is it an unfair
inference that, if he had remained permanently in Charleston, so sad a
fate would not have overtaken the infant academy? In support of this
inference we shall now see that he was largely instrumental in bringing
into being an artistic association, over which he presided for many
years, and which has continued to prosper until, at the present day, it
is the leading artistic body in this country.

When Morse settled in New York in 1825 there existed an American Academy
of Arts, of which Colonel Trumbull, the celebrated painter, was the
president. While eminent as a painter, Trumbull seems to have lacked
executive ability and to have been rather haughty and overbearing in his