although he had friends, the best of friends, as they were--one of them at least, Burke, the best of men--he had already received from them the entire means of subsistence while he had been studying so long at Rome, and was determined, therefore, to be no longer a burden to them or to others; but how should he, renouncing all ordinary blandishments of a young painter's career, the "face-painting" and other methods by which genius condescends to become fashionable, or, in other words, to lay down its immortality for the pleasure of being acknowledged immortal--how was he to subsist? It was whilst this question remained, we may suppose, not decisively answered, that the painter thus wrote to another friend:--"O, I could be happy, in my going home, to find some corner where I could sit down in the middle of my studies, books, and casts after the antique, to paint this work and others, where I might have models of nature, when necessary, bread and soup, and a coat to cover me! I should care not what became of my work when it was done; but I reflect with horror upon such a fellow as I am, and with such a kind of art in London, with house-rent to pay, duns to follow me, and employers to look for. Had I studied art in a manner more accommodated to the nation, there would be no dread of this." But from this state of despondency and dissatisfaction he was soon to rise triumphant. Again and again he asked himself how he was to subsist while the great things he meditated should be accomplished, and the answer came: the conclusion was anything but attractive or cheering, but he saw it was the conclusion: no cross, no crown; and he accepted it ungrudgingly. It was not long before he could say, "I have taken great pains to fashion myself to this kind of Quixotism; to this end I have contracted and simplified my cravings and wants, and brought them into a very narrow compass." There are few, we think, of those who may have smiled with pity or contempt at the painter's mean garb, who would not have honoured it while they reverenced him, had they known this. The first apparent opportunity of achieving the object indicated was in connection with the proposed decoration of St Paul's.[28] But this fell through, and it was not until the Society of Arts accepted his offer that he was able to bring himself into line with his own convictions. [Illustration: _Nathaniel Smith._ 1790. THE STRAND ENTRANCE TO DURHAM YARD.]