From this we see that Morse's enthusiasm was tempered with tact and common sense. His proposals were received with unanimous approval, and on the 15th of January, 1826, the following fifteen were chosen:--S.F.B. Morse, Henry Inman, A.B. Durand, John Frazee, William Wall, Charles C. Ingham, William Dunlap, Peter Maverick, Ithiel Town, Thomas S. Cummings, Edward Potter, Charles C. Wright, Mosely J. Danforth, Hugh Reinagle, Gerlando Marsiglia. These fifteen professional artists added by ballot to their number the following fifteen:--Samuel Waldo, William Jewett, John W. Paradise, Frederick S. Agate, Rembrandt Peale, James Coyle, Nathaniel Rogers, J. Parisen, William Main, John Evers, Martin E. Thompson, Thomas Cole, John Vanderlyn (who declined), Alexander Anderson, D.W. Wilson. Thus was organized the National Academy of Design. Morse was elected its first president and was annually reëlected to that office until the year 1845, when, the telegraph having now become an assured success, he felt that he could not devote the necessary time and thought to the interests of the Academy, and he insisted on retiring. In the year 1861 he was prevailed upon by Thomas S. Cummings, one of the original academicians, but now a general, to become again the president, and he served in that office for a year. The General, in a letter to Mr. Prime in 1873, says, "and, I may add, was beloved by all." I shall not attempt to give a detailed account of the early struggles of the Academy, closely interwoven though they be with Morse's life. Those who may be interested in the matter will find them all detailed in General Cummings' "Records of the National Academy of Design." Morse prepared and delivered a number of lectures on various subjects pertaining to the fine arts, and most of these have been preserved in pamphlet form. In this connection I shall quote again from the letter of General Cummings before alluded to:-- "Mr. Morse's connection with the Academy was doubtless unfavorable in a pecuniary point of view; his interest in it interfering with professional practice, and the time taken to enable him to prepare his course of lectures materially contributed to favor a distribution of his labors in art to other hands, and it never fully returned to him. His 'Discourse on Academies of Art,' delivered in the chapel of Columbia College, May, 1827, will long stand as a monument of his ability in the line of art literature. "As an historical painter Mr. Morse, after Allston, was probably the best prepared and most fully educated artist of his day, and should have received the attention of the Government and a share of the distributions in art commissions." That his efforts were appreciated by his fellow artists and by the cultivated people of New York is thus modestly described in a letter to his parents of November 18, 1825:--