minence in
England. That he could succeed Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of the
Royal Academy was a tribute to his fame, but equally convincing proof
that he had ceased to be identified with the land of his nativity.
Gilbert Stuart owed much to West, but his return to America in 1792
saved him from complete subservience to English models. As a portrait
painter he developed power and individuality. Posterity may well be
grateful that the portraits of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison were
painted with fidelity to nature as Stuart saw it, rather than in the
grandiose manner of West. Two other names, Malbone and Allston, deserve
brief mention. The one achieved some distinction as a painter of
miniatures; the other is remembered both as artist and man of letters in
the literary circle which was forming about Boston. The name of Jonathan
Trumbull completes the list of American artists. What David was to the
great actors in the revolutionary drama in France, Trumbull was to the
notable characters of the American Revolution. In his conception of his
themes he was perhaps the most genuinely American painter of his time.

In the pages of his autobiography, Trumbull recounts an interview with
his father which may take the place of any further comment on the dearth
of artistic feeling in the United States. The young man was arguing
passionately for his vocation. The father, a typical Yankee, listened
with commendable patience, and complimented the lad when he had
finished. "'But,' added he, 'you must give me leave to say, that you
appear to have overlooked, or forgotten, one very important point in
your case.' 'Pray, sir,' I rejoined, 'what was that?' 'You appear to
forget, sir, that _Connecticut is not Athens_'; and with this pithy
remark, he bowed and withdrew, and nevermore opened his lips upon the
subject. How often have those few impressive words recurred to my
memory."

The names of Bryant, Cooper, and Irving are linked with the city of New
York which enjoyed for a brief time that primacy in the world of
American letters which it was fast acquiring in commerce. The center of
literary and scholarly activity in the next generation was Boston,
where the New England renaissance began. In this revival of letters
Harvard College had a notable part. In 1806, John Quincy Adams was
appointed Professor of Rhetoric and gave a course of lectures which
moulded the taste of that school of orators to which Edward Everett
belonged--a s