780 THE GEOKGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



This disiaterested frankness endeared me lo that good mau to his last days, and his 

 advice, which I followed, resulted, as he had predicted, to my benefit. My subscription 

 list my kind friend the Hon. C. A. Murray had in a few days commenced, with the 

 subscriptions of her most gracious Majesty the Queen, H. E. II. Prince Albert, her 

 Majesty the Queen Dowager, H. R. H. the Duchess of Kent, his Majesty the King of 

 the Belgians, H. M. the Queen of the Belgians, his Royal Highness the Duke of Sus- 

 ses, H. R. H. Leopold, Due de Brabant, after which soon followed a complimentary 

 list of the nobility and gentry, together with the leading institutions of the king- 

 dom. , 



Shortly after the publication of " Eight Years Amongst the North 

 American Indians," Mr. Catlin received the following note from Michael 



Faraday : 



Royal Institute, Novemler 22, 1841. 

 My Dear Sir: I haive received your delightful volumes, and congratulate you 

 on their completion. As I was writing my name on the title page (which I do to 

 all my books) I could not help wishing to have your autograph there. If it is not 

 disagreeable to you I hope you will favor me with it just before mine, but if you 

 would rather not, do not be troubled by my asking you, but send them back without. 

 I will send for them this evening. 



Ever truly yours, 



M. Faraday. 

 Geo. Catlin, Esq. 



My work was published by myself, at Egyx)tian Hall, and the only fears which my 

 good friend John Murray had expressed for me were all dispersed by the favorable 

 announcements by Mr. Dilke, of the Athenaium, and the editors of other literary 

 journals, from which it will be seen that the subjoined notices are but very brief ex- 

 tracts. 



It may not be improj)er also here to remark, that for all the royal copies subscribed 

 for above, the Hon. C. A. Murray was ordered to remit me double the amount of the 

 price of the work ; and that, on a subsequent occasion, when my dear wife and my- 

 self were guests at the dinner table of John Murray, he said to his old friend Thomas 

 Moore, who was by our side, " That wild man by the side of you there. Mr. Catlin, who 

 has spent enough of his life amongst the wild Indians (sleeping on the ground and 

 eating raw buifalo meat) to make you and I as gray as badgers, and who has not yet a 

 gray hair in his head, applied to me about a year ago to publish his Notes. I was 

 then, for the first time in my life, too honest for my own interest, as well as that of 

 an author ; and I advised him to publish it himself, as the surest way of making some- 

 thing out of it. My wife here will tell you that I have read every word of it through, 

 heavy as it is, and she knows it is the only book that I have read quite through in 

 the last five years. And I tell Mr. Catlin now, in your presence, that I shall regret 

 as long as I live that I did not publish that work for him ; for as sincerely as I ad- 

 vised him, I could have promoted his interest by so doing, and would have done so, 

 had I known what was in the work when he jDroposed it to me." 

 ■ The reader will pardon me for inserting here the critical notices which follow : 



[Edinburgh Review, fifteen pages.] 



" Living with them as one of themselves ; having no trading purpose to serve ; ex- 

 citing no enmity by the well-meant but suspicious preaching of a new religion, Mr. 

 Catlin went on with his rifle and his pencil, sketching and noting whatever he saw 

 worthy of record ; and wisely abandoning all search for the ancient history of a peo- 

 ple who knew no writing, he confined his labors to depicting exactly what he saw, 

 and that only. Notes and sketches were transmitted, as occasion served, to New 

 York, and the collected results now appear, partly in a gallery which has been for 



