an write you, for I am almost overwhelmed by the
multitude of cares that crowd upon me.... I find that the path of duty,
though plain, is not without its roughness. I can say but in one word
that the Association of Artists, of whom I am president, after
negotiations of some weeks with the Academy of Fine Arts to come into it
on terms of mutual benefit, find their efforts unavailing, and have
separated and formed a new academy to be called, probably, the National
Academy of the Arts of Design. I am at its head, but the cares and
responsibility which devolve on me in consequence are more than a balance
for the honor. The battle is yet to be fought for the need of public
favor, and were it not that the entire and perfect justness of our cause
is clear to me in every point of view, I should retire from a contest
which would merely serve to rouse up all the 'old Adam' to no profit; but
the cause of the artists seems, under Providence, to be, in some degree,
confided to me, and I cannot shrink from the cares and troubles at
present put upon me. I have gone forward thus far, asking direction from
above, and, in looking around me, I feel that I am in the path of duty.
May I be kept in it and be preserved from the temptations, the various
and multiplied and complicated temptations, to which I know I shall be
exposed. In every step thus far I feel an approving conscience; there is
none I could wish to retrace....

"I fear you will think I have but few thoughts for you all at home, and
my dear little ones in particular. I do think of them, though, very
often, with many a longing to have a home for them under a parent's roof,
and all my efforts now are tending distantly to that end; but when I
shall ever have a home of my own, or whether it will ever be, I know not.
The necessity for a second connection on their account seems pressing,
but I cannot find my heart ready for it. I am occasionally rallied on the
subject, but the suggestion only reminds me of her I have lost, and a
tear is quite as ready to appear as a smile; or, if I can disguise it, I
feel a pang within that shows me the wound is not yet healed. It is
eleven months since she has gone, but it seems but yesterday."

"_April 18, 1826._ I don't know but you will think I have forgotten how
to write letters, and I believe this is the first I have written for six
weeks.

"The pressure of my lectures became very great towards the close of them,
and I was compelled to bend m