of these
days. I have an historical picture to paint, which will occupy me for
some time, for a proprietor of a steamboat which is building in
Philadelphia to be the most splendid ever built. He has engaged
historical pictures of Allston, Vanderlyn, Sully, and myself, and
landscapes of the principal landscape painters, for a gallery on board
the boat. I consider this as a new and noble channel for the
encouragement of painting, and in such an enterprise and in such company
I shall do my best.

"What do you think of sparing me for about one year to visit Paris and
Rome to finish what I began when in Europe before? My education as a
painter is incomplete without it, and the time is rapidly going away when
my age will render it impossible to profit by such studies, even if I
should be able, at a future time, to visit Europe again.... I can,
perhaps, leave my dear little ones at their age better than if they were
more advanced, and, as my views are ultimately to benefit them, I think
no one will accuse me of neglecting them. If they do, they know but
little of my feelings towards them."

The mother's answer to this letter has not been preserved, but whether
she dissuaded him from going at that time, or whether other reasons
prevented him, the fact is that he did not start on the voyage to Europe
(the return trip proving so momentous to himself and to the world) until
exactly three years later.

I shall pass rapidly over these intervening three years. They were years
of hard work, but of work rewarded by material success and increasing
honor in the community.

On May 8, 1827, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the National
Academy of Design, Morse, its president, delivered an address before a
brilliant audience in the chapel of Columbia College. This address was
considered so remarkable that, at the request of the Academy, it was
published in pamphlet form. It called forth a sharp review in the "North
American," which voiced the opinions of those who were hostile to the new
Academy, and who considered the term "National" little short of arrogant.
Morse replied to this attack in a masterly manner in the "Journal of
Commerce," and this also was published in pamphlet form and ended the
controversy.

In the year 1827, Professor James Freeman Dana, of Columbia College,
delivered a series of lectures on the subject of electricity at the New
York Athenaeum. Professor Dana was an enthusiast in the study of that
scien