Williams was an adventurous painter; he manifested histrionic leanings by painting the scenery for that heathen abomination, the old Southwark Theatre in Philadelphia. He lived "in Loxley's Court at the sign of Hogarth's head," and his one surviving picture reveals the influence of Hogarth's "conversation pieces." These group portraits, depicting several people painted in full length and behaving somewhat naturally, had come to England via the French courtly artists, and it was the courtliness that appealed to Williams. The canvas shows a lady and gentleman posed with stiff elegance in a grotto of foliage; the lady is pointing with her fan at a water­fall trickling in one corner. At their feet is a little dishrag of a dog. But the amazing part of the picture is the background against which the two Americans stand. We are startled to see romantic European hills, a Norman church tower, a thatched mill, and a ruined medi­eval castle. Although the drawing is weak and the composition crowded, the colour is pleasing and the picture has charm in its very naivete and stiffness. It is easy to understand how West was enchanted with such elaborate pictures as this.

When Williams asked his young disciple what books he had read, Benjamin replied that he had read nothing but the Bible; the horrified artist allowed him to take back with him to his father's house Richardson's Essays in Painting and a translation of Dufres­noy's poem L'Art de la Peinture. West studied them with frown­ing attention while the mighty trees of the wilderness, gleaming prismatically in every shade of green, rocked unnoticed over his head. He did not even look up to greet his friends the Indians as they padded by; he was too absorbed in mouthing strange names of foreign painters. "At the raising of Lazarus," he read in Rich­ardson, "some may be allowed to be made to hold something before their noses, as this would be very just to denote that circumstance in the story, the time he had been dead; but this is exceedingly im­proper in the laying of Our Lord in the sepulchre; although he had been dead much longer than he was; however, Pardenome has done it. . . . That the blessed Mary should swoon away through excess of grief is very proper to suppose, but to throw her into such a posture as Daniel da Volterra has done in the descent from the cross is by no means justifiable." West, of course, had not the faint­est idea how any of these pictures looked, but what small boy could resist such long words and such quaint considerations? A few years before, another country lad, this time across the ocean, had been so thrilled by Richardson's Essays that he had determined to be­come a painter; his name was Reynolds and he was to become West's rival in a city neither had ever seen.

One day West half reluctantly laid down the books Williams had lent him in order to go riding with a schoolmate on a single horse. Full of the newly realized dignity of his profession West re­fused to ride behind. "Oh, well," he remembered that his compan­ion replied, "you take the saddle and I will get behind you." Thus they proceeded gaily until West's friend boasted he was going to be a tailor.

"Surely," the infant artist cried, "you will never follow that tradel" and he held forth on its feminine character until his com­panion asked in irritation what he intended to be. West sat up straighter as the Pennsylvania scenery jogged by. "A painter," he replied.

of waterfalls, show an audacity and a power that boded well for the future.

When West did a portrait of William Henry, the rich gunsmith and inventor in Lancaster, Henry asked him why he wasted his time on portraits, rather than painting truly sublime subjects such as the death of Socrates. West said that sounded like a nice subject, but who was Socrates? After Henry read him the story from Rollin's Ancient History, West set right to work, "painting antique togas as self-confidently as he had painted medieval castles. He used the frontispiece of the history as a model, but added innumerable fig­ures, thus at the age of sixteen making the first of the crowded classical canvases that were to bring him world-wide fame.