years later. Just prior to his advancement to
Academician rank, he wrote one of the few letters by him that have been
preserved:--"I observe what you say respecting the election of an R.A.;
but what am I to do here? They know that I am on their list; if they
choose to elect me without solicitation, it will be the more honourable
to me, and I will think the more of it; but if it can only be obtained
by means of solicitation and canvassing, I must give up all hopes of
it, for I would think it unfair to employ those means."

No doubt election was particularly gratifying to Raeburn. Isolated as
he was in Edinburgh, where an Academy did not come into existence until
some years after his death, it must have been stimulating to receive
such tangible assurance of that appreciation of one's fellow-workers
which is the most grateful form of admiration to the artist. He
reciprocated by offering as his diploma work the impressive portrait of
himself, which is now one of the treasures of the National Gallery of
Scotland. The rules of the Academy, however, forbade the acceptance of
a self-portrait, and in 1821 he gave the "Boy with Rabbit"--a portrait
of his step-grandson, but one of his most genre-like pieces. Other
Academic diplomas received later were those of the Academies of
Florence, New York, and South Carolina.

A year before he died these artistic laurels were supplemented by royal
favour. On the occasion of that never-to-be-forgotten event--to those
who took part in it--the first visit of a King to Scotland since the
Union of Parliaments, Raeburn was presented to George IV. and knighted.
His fellow artists marked their appreciation of this fresh distinction
by entertaining him to a public dinner, at which the chairman,
Alexander Nasmyth, the doyen of the local painters, declared that "they
loved him as a man not less than they admired him as an artist." And
in the following May, the King appointed him his "limner and painter in
Scotland, with all fees, profits, salaries, rights, privileges, and
advantages thereto belonging."

Raeburn did not long enjoy these new honours. In July, a day or two
after returning from an archaeological excursion in Fifeshire with,
amongst others, Sir Walter Scott and Miss Edgeworth, he became suddenly
ill, took to bed, and in less than a week was dead.

[1] All Raeburn's biographers follow Cunningham in stating that Raeburn
succeeded to St Bernard's on the death of his brother in