Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/95

BENJAMIN WEST 255 bled for a pen, and with red and black ink made a hasty but striking picture of the little beauty. He heard his mother returning, and conscious of having been in mischief, tried to conceal his production ; but she detected and captured it, and regarded it long and lovingly, exclaiming as her daughter entered, " He has really made a likeness of little Sally ! " She then caught up the boy in her arms, and kissed instead of chiding him, and he — looking up encouraged — told her he could make the flowers, too, if she would permit. The awakening of genius in Ben- jamin West has been distinctly traced to this incident, as the time when he first discovered that he could imitate the forms of such objects as pleased his sense of sight. And the incident itself has been aptly styled " the birth of fine arts in the New World." The Quaker boy, in course of years, left the wilderness of America to become the president of the Royal Academy in London. His irreproachable character not less than his excellence as an artist, gave him commanding position among his contemporaries. From first to last he was distinguished for his indefatigable industry. The number of his pictures has been estimated, by a writer in Black- wood's Magazine, at three thousand ; and Dunlap says that a gallery capable of holding them would be four hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, and forty feet high — or a wall a quarter of a mile long. The parents of Benjamin West were sincere and self-respecting, and in the language of the times, well-to-do. His mother's grandfather was the intimate and confidential friend of William Penn. The family of his father claimed direct de- scent from the Black Prince and Lord Delaware, of the time of King Edward III. Colonel James West was the friend and companion in arms of John Hamp- den When Benjamin West was at work upon his great picture of the " Institu- tion of the Garter," the King of England was delighted when the Duke of Buck- ingham assured him that West had an ancestral right to a place among the warriors and knights of his own painting. The Quaker associates of the parents of the artist, the patriarchs of Pennsylvania, regarded their asylum in America as the place for affectionate intercourse — free from all the military predilections and political jealousies of Europe. The result was a state of society more contented, peaceful, and pleasing than the world had ever before exhibited At the time of the birth of Benjamin West the interior settlements in Pennsylvania had at- tained considerable wealth, and unlimited hospitality formed a part of the regular economy of the principal families. Those who resided near the highways were in the habit, after supper and the religious exercises of the evening, of making a large fire in the hallway, and spreading a table with refreshments for such trav- ellers as might pass in the night, who were expected to step in and help themselves. This was conspicuously the case in Springfield. Other acts of liberality were perfoimed by this community, to an extent that would have beggared the munifi- cence of the old world. Poverty was not known in this region. But whether families traced their lineage to ancient and noble sources, or otherwise, their pride was so tempered with the meekness of their faith, that it lent a singular dignity to their benevolence.