latest work. But no commission followed, either from a private patron
or public body. However, the artist, nothing daunted, ordered a larger
canvas, and set vigorously to work on a representation of 'Christ's
Entry into Jerusalem,' a picture which occupied him, with intervals of
illness and idleness, for nearly six years.

The year 1815 was too full of stir and excitement for a man like
Haydon, who was always keenly interested in public affairs, to devote
himself to steady work. The news of Waterloo almost turned his brain.
On June 23 he notes: 'I read the _Gazette_ [with the account of
Waterloo] the last thing before going to bed. I dreamt of it, and was
fighting all night; I got up in a steam of feeling, and read the
_Gazette_ again, ordered a _Courier_ for a month, and read all
the papers till I was faint.... 'Have not the efforts of the
nation,' I asked myself, 'been gigantic?' To such glories she only
wants to add the glories of my noble art to make her the grandest
nation in the world, and these she shall have if God spare my life....

'_June_ 25.--Dined with Hunt. I give myself credit for not
worrying him to death at this news. He was quiet for some time, but
knowing it must come, and putting on an air of indifference, he said,
"Terrible battle this, Haydon." "A glorious one, Hunt." "Oh yes,
certainly," and to it we went. Yet Hunt took a just and liberal view
of the situation. As for Hazlitt, it is not to be believed how the
destruction of Napoleon affected him; he seemed prostrated in mind and
body; he walked about unwashed, unshaved, hardly sober by day, and
always intoxicated by night, literally, without exaggeration, for
weeks, until at length, wakening as it were from his stupor, he at
once left off all stimulating liquors, and never touched them after.'