"Being distinguished by Your Majesty's benignity at an early period as a painter, and chosen by those professors highly endowed in the three branches of the fine arts to fill their highest station, and sanctioned by Your Majesty's signature in their choice;--in that station, I have been, for more than ten years, zealous in promoting merit in those three branches of art, which constitutes the views of Your Majesty's establishment for cultivating their growth. The ingenious artists have received my professional aid, and my galleries and my purse have been open to their studies and their distresses. The breath of envy, nor the whisper of detraction, never defiled my lips, nor the want of morality my character, and, through life, a strict adherer to truth; a zealous admirer of Your Majesty's virtues and goodness of heart, the exalted virtues of Her Majesty the Queen, and the high accomplishments of others of Your Majesty's illustrious family, have been the theme of my delight; and their gracious complacency my greatest pleasure and consolation for many years, with which I was honoured by many instances of friendly notice, and their warm attachment to the fine arts. "With these feelings of high sensibility, with which my breast has ever been inspired, I feel with great concern the suspension given by Mr. Wyatt to the work on Revealed Religion, my pencil had advanced to adorn Windsor-Castle. If, gracious Sire, this suspension is meant to be permanent, myself and the fine arts have to lament. For to me it will be ruinous, and, to the energetic artist, in the highest branches of his professional pursuits--a damp in the hope of more exalted minds, of patronage in the refined departments in painting. But I have this in store, for the grateful feeling of my heart, that, in the thirty-five years by which my pencil has been honoured by Your Majesty's commands, a great body of historical and scriptural compositions will be found in Your Majesty's possession, in the churches, and in the country. Their professional claims may be humble, but they have been produced by a loyal subject of Your Majesty, which may give them some claim to respect, similar works not having been attained before in this country by a subject; and this I will assert as my claim, that Your Majesty did not bestow your patronage and commands on an ungrateful and a lazy man, but on him who had a high sense of Your Majesty's honours and Your Majesty's interests in all cases, as a loyal and dutiful subject, as well as servant, to Your Majesty's gracious commands; and I humbly beg Your Majesty to be assured that "I am, "With profound duty, "Your Majesty's grateful "BENJAMIN WEST."