When it was determined among the Friends that Benjamin West should be allowed to cultivate the art of Painting, he went to Lancaster, but he was hastily recalled by a severe domestic misfortune. His mother was seized by a dangerous illness, and being conscious that she could not live long, she requested that he might be sent for home. Benjamin hastily obeyed the summons, but, before he reached the house, her strength was exhausted, and she was only able to express by her look the satisfaction with which she saw him approach the bed, before she expired. Her funeral, and the distress which the event naturally occasioned to her family, by all of whom she was very tenderly beloved, detained the young Artist some time at his father's. About the end of August, in 1756, however, he took his final departure, and went to Philadelphia. But, before proceeding with the narrative of his professional career, it is necessary to advert to some of the public transactions of that period, by which his sensibility was powerfully excited. Indeed it will appear throughout the whole of these singular memoirs, that the subject of them was, perhaps, more immediately affected by the developement of national events, than usually falls to the lot of any individual so little connected with public men, and so far remote from the great thoroughfare of political occurrences. After the destruction of General Bradock's army, the Pennsylvanians being alarmed at the defenceless state in which they were placed by that calamity, the Assembly of the Province resolved to embody a militia force; and Mr. Wayne, who has been already mentioned, was appointed Colonel of the Regiment raised in Chester County. This defensive measure announced that the golden age of the country was past, and the change felt by the peaceful Quakers indicated an alteration in their harmless manners. West, among others, went to view the first muster of the troops under the command of Colonel Wayne, and the sight of men in arms, their purpose and array, warmed his lively imagination with military enthusiasm. In conjunction with a son of the Colonel, a boy of his own age, with whom he had become acquainted, he procured a gun, and determined also to be a soldier. Young Wayne was drilled by the diciplinarians of his father's corps, and he, in turn, exercised West, who, being more alert and active, soon obtained a decided superiority; but what different destinies were attached to them! West has attained, in the intellectual discipline of the arts of peace, an enviable reputation; and Wayne, who was inferior to him in the manual of the soldier, became an illustrious commander, and partook, as the companion in arms of Washington, of the glory of having established the independence of America.