appear he often raises up those great characters, the spirit of whose
imaginations have an interminable influence on posterity, and who are
themselves separated and elevated among the generality of mankind, by
the name of men of genius. Can we believe that all this is not for some
useful purpose? What that purpose is, ought we to pretend to
investigate? Let us rather reflect that the Almighty God has been
pleased among us, and in this remote wilderness, to endow, with the rich
gifts of a peculiar spirit, that youth who has now our common consent to
cultivate his talents for an art, which, according to our humble and
human judgment, was previously thought an unnecessary ministration to
the sensual propensities of our nature. May it be demonstrated by the
life and works of the Artist, that the gift of God has not been bestowed
on him in vain, nor the motives of the beneficent inspiration which
induces us to suspend our particular tenets, prove barren of religious
or moral effect. On the contrary, let us confidently hope that this
occurrence has been for good, and that the consequences which may arise
in the society of this new world, from the example which Benjamin West
will be enabled to give, will be such a love of the arts of peace as
shall tend to draw the ties of affection closer, and diffuse over a
wider extent of community the interests and blessing of fraternal love."

At the conclusion of this address, the women rose and kissed the young
Artist, and the men, one by one, laid their hands on his head and prayed
that the Lord might verify in his life the value of the gift which had
induced them, in despite of their religious tenets, to allow him to
cultivate the faculties of his genius.

The history of no other individual affords an incident so extraordinary.
This could not be called a presentiment, but the result of a clear
expectation, that some important consequence would ensue. It may be added