It appears that he must also have received but few, if any, orders for portraits, for, in the following summer, he started on a painting tour through New Hampshire, which proved to be of great moment to him in more ways than one.

Before we follow him on that tour, however, I shall quote from a letter written by him to his friend Washington Allston:—­

Boston, April 10, 1816.

MY DEAR SIR,—­I have but one moment to write you by a vessel which sails to-morrow morning.  I wrote Leslie by New Packet some months since and am hourly expecting an answer.

I congratulate you, my dear sir, on the sale of your picture of the “Dead Man.”  I suppose you will have received notice, before this reaches you, that the Philadelphia Academy of Arts have purchased it for the sum of thirty-five hundred dollars.  Bravo for our country!

I am sincerely rejoiced for you and for the disposition which it shows of future encouragement.  I really think the time is not far distant when we shall be able to settle in our native land with profit as well as pleasure.  Boston seems struggling in labor to bring forth an institution for the arts, but it will miscarry; I find it is all forced.  They can talk, and talk, and say what a fine thing it would be, but nothing is done.  I find by experience that what you have often observed to me with respect to settling in Boston is well founded.  I think it will be the last in the arts, though, without doubt, it is capable of being the first, if the fit would only take them.  Oh! how I miss you, my dear sir.  I long to spend my evenings again with you and Leslie.  I shall certainly visit Italy (should I live and no unforeseen event take place) in the course of a year or eighteen months.  Could there not be some arrangement made to meet you and Leslie there?

He lived, but the “unforeseen event” occurred to make him alter all his plans.  Further on in this same letter he says:—­

“My conscience accuses me, and hardly too, of many instances of pettishness and ill-humor towards you, which make me almost hate myself that I could offend a temper like yours.  I need not ask you to forgive it; I know you cannot harbor anger a minute, and perhaps have forgotten the instances; but I cannot forget them.  If you had failings of the same kind and I could recollect any instances where you had spoken pettishly or ill-natured to me, our accounts would then have been balanced, they would have called for mutual forgetfulness and forgiveness; but when, on reflection, I find nothing of the kind to charge you with, my conscience severely upbraids me with ingratitude to you, to whom (under Heaven) I owe all the little knowledge of my art which I possess.  But I hope still I shall prove grateful to you; at any rate, I feel my errors and must mend them.”

Mr. Allston thus answers this frank appeal for forgiveness:—­