stepping between the sleeping grooms to murder the king, was finished,
and sent to the British Gallery. It was well hung, and was praised by
the critics, but Sir George declined to take it, though he offered to
pay Haydon a hundred pounds for his trouble, or to give him a
commission for a picture on a smaller scale. Haydon petulantly refused
both offers, and thus after three years' work, and incurring debts to
the amount of six hundred pounds, he found himself penniless, with his
picture returned on his hands. This disappointment was only the
natural result of his own impracticable temperament, but to Haydon's
exaggerative sense the whole world seemed joined in a conspiracy
against him. 'Exasperated by the neglect of my family,' he writes,
'tormented by the consciousness of debt, cut to the heart by the
cruelty of Sir George, and enraged at the insults of the Academy, I
became furious.' His fury, unfortunately, found vent in an attack upon
the Academy and its methods, through the medium of the _Examiner_,
which was the recognised vehicle of all attacks upon authority.
The onslaught seems to have been justified, though whether
it was judicious is another question. The ideals of English artists
during the early years of the nineteenth century had sunk very low,
and the standard of public taste was several degrees lower.
Portrait-painting was the only lucrative branch of art, and the
Academy was almost entirely in the hands of the portrait-painters, who
gave little encouragement to works of imagination. The burden of the
patron, which had been removed from literature, still rested upon
painting, and the Academicians found it more to their interest to
foster the ignorance than to educate the taste of the patron.

Over the signature of 'An English Student,' Haydon not only exposed
the inefficiency of the Academy, but advocated numerous reforms, chief
among them being an improved method of election, the establishment of