seemed hopeless. Riding on horseback or driving the Hampstead coach was more congenial to his taste than sitting at home working at his easel. His friends tried to help him by inducing him to raise the price of his pictures. He might by this means have got quit of existing difficulties; but the habit of contracting debts had become so confirmed that no means seemed capable of saving him from destruction. This wretched method of living had almost become a mania. New boots, buckskin breeches, horses, bridles and saddles, or anything, and at any price the vender pleased, were purchased on credit.

This mad method of living and rushing into debt soon compelled a meeting of creditors, when a compromise was effected by which Morland was kept out of prison and permitted to paint at home. He paid a composition of nine and fivepence in the pound, and then commenced a new career of folly, purchasing a violin, a violoncello, and a pianoforte! Spreading a free table for his boon companions, buying horses without any knowledge of the animals, allowing his companions to borrow them and forget to return them, was an unsuccessful method of commencing an amended life. When sought upon business, he was either out, in bed, or not to be seen. His attention was absorbed with riding, music, drinking, and smoking, in all of which he had acquired equal facility. He had in the meantime to find time to paint, or his difficulties would have been greater than they were. He, however, painted with such facility that he has been known to commence

and finish a painting while one of his friends waited for him, and which within two hours was sold for ten guineas, and shortly afterwards for forty guineas, and which would now sell for four times forty.

He could not, however, paint as quickly as his debts accumulated; and the one fear of his life was threatened arrest by the sheriff's officer. To escape from this danger, if possible, induced him to run away to Leicester, where he lodged with a farmer, and where in a fit of industry he produced a number of excellent paintings, which were speedily sold for a considerable sum of money. On his return to London, he stole in and out of his own house like a thief-living and working in the hay-loft under the constant fear of discovery. He then took lodgings in various places to avoid arrest,— Lambeth, East Sheen, Minories, Kentish Town, China Row, Newington, and Hackney. In the last place he was suspected of being a forger and coiner. The bank authorities, on discovering who he was, presented him with twenty guineas, to compensate him for the annoyance to which he had been subjected. From Hackney he went to Leadenhall Street and City Road. He had purposed going to Cowes in the Isle of Wight, but learned that the sheriff's officer had discovered his intention. His next retreat, at Yarmouth, was invaded by a company of soldiers-the Dorset Militia-who arrested him as a spy. The commanding officer, who was not much gifted with a knowledge of art, only saw in Morland's paintings plans of the coast to enable the French to effect a landing! The justice before whom (744)

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Morland was taken was equally ignorant. He did not, however, send him to jail; but solemnly warned him against indulging in such dangerous practices as painting and drawing! When Morland returned to London he took lodgings at Vauxhall. He then removed to Lambeth Road, which was within "the rules of the King's Bench," where a debtor was free from danger of arrest. As Morland could not go out of the "rules" to see his old companions, he invited them to visit him, and formed a club called the Knights of the Palette," for their entertainment.

It is wonderful that in this strange, fevered, life Morland could work at all; and yet it is certain that no artist ever produced an equal number of pictures in the same space of time. Within four years he painted four hundred pictures; and before his fortieth year he had sent from his easel four thousand! But when the July of 1804 arrived, Morland's power to produce pictures was nearly ended. His mad life had obtained for him the usual attendant conditions-he was besotted, squalid, cadaverous; he had hanging cheeks, pinched nose, contracted nostrils, bleared and bloodshot eyes, bloated frame, swelled legs, palsied hands, and tremulous voice-all bespeaking the dismal ruin of what was once one of the soundest frames and one of the brightest geniuses the true lover of art could admire. "He was in the very prime of life-a mere wreck and shattered ruin of a man, estranged from his wife, deserted by his old associates, depraved in mind, and debilitated in body." It was at this time that he was

again arrested, for a miserable debt of seventy shillings owing to a publican. The day after his arrest he fell from his chair in a fit, and remained in that state from the twentieth to the twenty-ninth day of October, when he expired without a groan. His body was interred at St. James's Chapel, where his wife was laid beside him two days after his interment!

XI.

Trying and Succeeding.

"If you wish success in life, make Perseverance your bosom friend, Experience your wise counsellor, Caution your elder brother, and Hope your guardian genius."-ADDISON.

"The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame.”LONGFELLOW.

66 "Tis not in mortals to command success;

But we'll do more, Sempronius-we'll deserve it."

M

ADDISON.

ANY who have desired to advance in life have failed because they would not try. They have been deterred from making a needed sustained effort by some foolish thought which they express in some such words as, "It is no use my trying." And so all the affairs of life run to waste. Success is attributed to genius, to luck, to opportunity, but rarely to its real source-persevering industry. Genius is supposed to be that which it is not,―a perfect power, accomplishing by its own natural force all that it undertakes. Coleridge admirably defines genius to be "the faculty of growth;' but it must be admitted that the growth is induced by inclination and choice. Hence the common remark that