f more or less
utility, in religion, politics, and humanitarian projects; but next to
his sincere religious faith, his art held chiefest sway, and everything
else was made subservient to that.

During the latter half of his life, however, a new goddess was enshrined
in his heart, a goddess whose cult entailed even greater self-sacrifice;
keener suffering, both mental and physical; more humiliation to a proud
and sensitive soul, shrinking alike from the jeers of the incredulous and
the libels and plots of the envious and the unscrupulous.

While he plied his brush for many years after the conception of his
epoch-making invention, it was with an ever lessening enthusiasm, with a
divided interest. Art no longer reigned supreme; Invention shared the
throne with her and eventually dispossessed her. It seems, therefore,
fitting that, in closing the chronicle of Morse the artist, his rank in
the annals of American art should be estimated as viewed by a
contemporary and by the more impartial historian of the present day.

From a long article prepared by the late Daniel Huntington for Mr. Prime,
I shall select the following passages:--

"My acquaintance with Professor Morse began in the spring of 1835, when I
was placed under his care by my father as a pupil. He then lived in
Greenwich Lane (now Greenwich Avenue), and several young men were
studying art under his instruction.... He gave a short time every day to
each pupil, carefully pointing out our errors and explaining the
principles of art. After drawing for some time from casts with the
crayon, he allowed us to begin the use of the brush, and we practised
painting our studies from the casts, using black, white, and raw umber.

"I believe this method was of great use in enabling us early to acquire a
good habit of painting. I only regret that he did not insist on our
sticking to this kind of study a longer time and drill us more severely
in it; but he indulged our hankering for color too soon, and, when once
we had tasted the luxury of a full palette of colors, it was a dry
business to go back to plain black and white.

"In the autumn of that year, 1835, he removed to spacious rooms in the
New York University on Washington Square. In the large studio in the
north wing he painted several fine portraits, among them the beautiful
full-length of his daughter, Mrs. Lind. He also lectured before the
students and a general audience, illustrating his subject by painted
diagram