The life and letters of Washington Allston . cture, and finish a small one andsell it. They were embarrassed for money, and he was troubledwith little debts. She prayed him not to do this, but he said hefeared he must; she said to him, Why dont you finish thelarge pictm-e and get the money for that? Martha, dontyou think of me as all the rest of the world does, was his onlyreply, and she could say no more. There is a deep pathos in this anecdote. A man whose entireinfluence and work had ministered directly to the exaltation ofhuman character; a man of the highest genius allied to a femi-nine s
The life and letters of Washington Allston . cture, and finish a small one andsell it. They were embarrassed for money, and he was troubledwith little debts. She prayed him not to do this, but he said hefeared he must; she said to him, Why dont you finish thelarge pictm-e and get the money for that? Martha, dontyou think of me as all the rest of the world does, was his onlyreply, and she could say no more. There is a deep pathos in this anecdote. A man whose entireinfluence and work had ministered directly to the exaltation ofhuman character; a man of the highest genius allied to a femi-nine sensitiveness unfitting him to cope with his fellows in thestruggle for subsistence ; a man in whom ideality and intellectpushed imagination into realms of the unseen that he mightmaterialize visions of beauty to entertain, purify, and uplift hisfellow-men, the gentlest and purest of beings burdened withpoverty! We cannot fix the obligation to assist such a man, Uriel in the Sun. From the original in the possession of the Duke of WAaniNQTON ALLSTON 425 but the simple fact of liis want is an indictment against a stateof things under which such a fact is possible. I am grow-ing old and losing my physical powers. I am ready to go, Ionly ask time and strength to finish Belshazzar. These wordswere addressed to his sister-in-law a few weeks before his depart-ure ; it was evidently toward evening with him. Viewed in its extended influences upon his life we may re-gard Belshazzar as his greatest misfortune. If this picturehad never been commenced he could, and doubtless would, haveovercome the other obstacles in the way of his happiness, hishealth, and the wider acknowledgment of his powers. Begun inthe zenith of his career, this picture soon became a great burden,and as such increased until he yielded to the pressure and left itupon the earth with his tired body. So burdened, what wonderthat clouds of indifference have gathered about his fame, and menknowing nothing of him
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