Watching from the sidelines. West hinted that he would run again if the King's approval could be elicited. "For a little time past," he told Farington, "the King appeared to be rather hurried in his manner, dresses himself three or four times a day, and on the whole is in such a state as those about him, when they observe it, do not like to address him on any subject but what is absolutely neces­sary, but wait till he is more calm." West was worried about his commission for the royal chapel, since Wyatt was converting that part of the castle into cloisters, and hoped his re-election would bring a specific order to continue the pictures. However, he refused to degrade himself by any courtier-like fawning. When the cam­paign was at its height, his best friends, Farington and Lawrence, joined in expressing incredulous amazement that, despite his need for royal support, West continued publicly to praise Napoleon. They agreed that West did not have "an English mind," but was kept in England only by his royal pension and the fact that his sons were married there.

Since there was no other artist in the Academy on whom its in­numerable prima donnas could agree, in December 1806 West was re-elected with only one contrary vote. All the members were so glad to return to his equitable rule that there was no more dissen­sion, and he remained president for the fourteen years until his death.

West continued painting with unabated rapidity on huge re­ligious canvases. When he was seventy-two, he completed in twenty days a picture of Christ Requiring the Pure of Mind-to Come to Him as Little Children, in which all the innumerable figures were life-sized. Lawrence, Farington, and Westall agreed it was one of his best pictures. "I thought West looked very old," Farington wrote, "and much reduced in his person and countenance, and his spirits seemed to be low, as if exhausted, but he only complained of having finished His task, and the stimulus which had lately op­erated upon him being taken away. He felt somewhat painfully."

Less than a year later the blow that he had been dreading came. The King went completely mad, the Prince of Wales was appointed regent, and instantly West's pension and all his royal commissions were cancelled. Courtiers, who had always resented the dominance of an American democrat, spread stories that he had taken advan­tage of the insane monarch; the newspapers reiterated that West had plundered the King of 34,187 pounds. They did not explain that he had earned this sum during forty-three years of hard labour.

At seventy-three, West was deprived of the. means of support he had relied on during most of his life. His wife told Farington that he had never invested a penny, and that his easy temper had al­lowed his sons to be brought up so improvidently that they would contribute nothing to his support. She herself was ill of a "paralytic complaint"; they did not have the money to take her to Bath, as the doctors ordered.

"If you expect either honour or profit by spending your days and nights in endless labour that you may excel in the department of