SAMUEL FINLEY B REESE MORSE. 223 



holding this position for eighteen years, till his 

 work on the telegraph required his whole attention. 

 These years were extremely busy years. So 

 numerous were his sitters, that he was obliged to 

 send many to his artist friends. In his evenings 

 he prepared a series of lectures on the Fine Arts, 

 which he delivered to large and fashionable audi- 

 ences at the New York Athenaeum. He also wrote 

 at this time a life of Lucretia Maria Davidson, a 

 young poet who died at Plattsburg, N. Y., when 

 she was seventeen, and several pamphlets against 

 the growing power of the Romish Church. 



Four years after the death of his wife he sailed 

 for Italy, still further to study his beloved art. 

 In London he again met Kogers, the poet, " he 

 has not the proverbial lot of the poet, he is not 

 poor, for he is one of the wealthiest bankers, and 

 lives in splendid style," said Morse, Turner, " the 

 best landscape-painter living," Irving, our secretary 

 of legation, and other distinguished men. 



For three years Morse remained in Europe, in 

 Eome becoming the friend of Thorwaldsen, whose 

 portrait he painted ; in Florence, of Horatio Green- 

 ough, the sculptor, of James Fenimore Cooper, 

 and many others. In Paris, Morse painted the 

 "Gallery of the Louvre," working from nine till 

 four daily, meeting Baron Humboldt, and receiving 

 the cordial hospitality of General Lafayette. 

 ^ October 1, 1832, he sailed from Havre, on the 

 packet ship Sully, for New York. That passage 

 marked an epoch not only in the life of S. F. B. 



