"As to the Prince Regent, you have, perhaps, heard how unpopular he has made himself. He has disappointed the expectations of very many. Among the most unpopular of his measures may be placed the retention of the Orders in Council, which orders, notwithstanding the declarations of Mr. Perceval [the Prime Minister] and others in the Ministry to the contrary, are fast, very fast reducing this country to ruin; and it is the opinion of some of the best politicians in this country that, should the United States either persist in the Non-Intercourse Law or declare war, this country would be reduced to the lowest extremity.[1]
[Footnote 1: Orders in Council were issued by the sovereign, with the advice of the Privy Council, in periods of emergency, trusting to their future ratification by Parliament. In this case, while promulgated as a retaliatory measure against Bonaparte's Continental System, they bore heavily upon the commerce of the United States.]
"Bankruptcies are daily increasing and petitions from all parts of the Kingdom, praying for the repeal of the Orders in Council, have been presented to the Prince, but he has declined hearing any of them. Also the Catholic cause remains undecided, and he refuses hearing anything on that subject. But no more of politics. I am sure you must have more than sufficient at home.
"I will turn to a more pleasant subject and give you a slight history of the American artists now in London.
"At the head stands Mr. West. He stands and has stood so long preëminent that I could relate but little of his history that would be new to you, so that I shall confine myself only to what has fallen under my own observation, and, of course, my remarks will be few.
"As a painter Mr. West can be accused of as few faults as any artist of ancient or modern times. In his studies he has been indefatigable, and the result of those studies is a perfect knowledge of the philosophy of his art. There is not a line or a touch in his pictures which he cannot account for on philosophical principles. They are not the productions of accident, but of study.
"His principal excellence is considered composition, design, and elegant grouping; and his faults were said to be a hard and harsh outline and bad coloring. These faults he has of late in a great degree amended. His outline is softer and his coloring, in some pictures in which he has attempted truth of color, is not surpassed by any artist now living, and some have even said that Titian himself did not surpass it. However that may be, his pictures of a late date are admirable even in this particular, and it evinces that, if in general he neglected that fascinating branch of art in some of his paintings, he still possesses a perfect knowledge of all its artifices. He has just completed a picture, an historical landscape, which, for clearness of coloring combined with grandeur of composition, has never been excelled.
"In his private character he is unimpeachable. He is a man of tender feelings, but of a mind so noble that it soars above the slanders of his enemies, and he expresses pity rather than revenge towards those who, through wantonness or malice, plan to undermine his character. No man, perhaps, ever passed through so much abuse, and none, I am confident, ever bore up against its virulence with more nobleness of spirit, with a steady perseverance in the pursuit of the sublimest of human professions. He has travelled on heedless of the sneers, the ridicule, or the detraction of his enemies, and he has arrived at that point where the lustre of his works will not fail to illuminate the dark regions of barbarism and distaste long after their bright author has ceased to exist.
"Excuse my fervor in the praise of this man. He is not a common man, not such a one as can be met with in every age. He is one of those geniuses who are doomed in their lifetime to endure the malice, the ridicule, and neglect of the world, and at their death to receive the praise and adoration of this same inconsistent world. I think there cannot be a stronger proof that human nature is always the same than that men of genius in all ages have been compelled to undergo the same disappointments and to pass through the same routine of calumny and abuse."
The rest of this letter is missing, which is a great pity, as it would be interesting to read what Morse had to say of Allston, Leslie, and the others.