between four and five thousand livres; and if he dies on the voyage, we pay his family ten thousand livres. This latter proposition was disagreeable to us; but he has a father, mother, and sisters, who have no resource but in his labor; and he is himself one of the best men in the world.” To insure the state against loss in case of his death, Mr. Jefferson, through Mr. Adams, procured an insurance upon Houdon's life, in London, at an additional expense of five hundred livres, or about ninety-two dollars. It was more than a year after the order for the statue was given before Houdon arrived. He came over in the same vessel that brought Doctor Franklin home. On the 20th of September, 1785, the Doctor gave Houdon a letter of introduction to Washington, and, at the same time, he wrote to the general to apprise him of the sculptor's arrival. Washington immediately wrote to Houdon, saying, "It will give me pleasure, sir, to welcome you to this seat of my retirement; and whatever I have or can procure that is necessary to your purposes, or convenient and agreeable to your wishes, you must freely command, as inclination to oblige you will be among the last things in which I shall be deficient, either on your arrival or during your stay.' Houdon arrived at Mount Vernon on the 3d of October, furnished with all necessary materials for making a bust of Washington. He remained there a fortnight, and made, on the living face of our illustrious Friend, a plaster mould, preparatory for the clay impression, which was then modelled into the form of a bust, and immediately, before it could shrink from drying, moulded and cast in plaster, to be afterward copied in marble, in Paris. That clay model was left at HOUDON'S BUST OF WASHINGTON. Mount Vernon, where it may be seen upon a bracket in the library, white-washed, so as to resemble marble or plaster of Paris. In the presence of Mr. Madison, Houdon made exact measurements of the person of Washington, and with ample memoranda concerning costume, et cetera, he returned to France. The statue was not completed until 1789, when to the inscription upon the pedestal were added the words: "Done in the year of CHRIST one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, and in the year of the commonwealth, twelve." Houdon's statue stands in the rotunda of the capitol at Richmond. It is of fine Italian marble, size of life. The costume is the military dress of the Revolution. The right 12 hand of the general rests upon a staff; the left is upon the folds of a military cloak thrown over the end of a bundle of fasces, with which are connected a sword and plough. Gouverneur Morris, who was in Paris when the statue was executed, stood as a model for the person of Washington. "Of what use," says Dunlap, "his person could be to the artist I cannot conceive, as there was no likeness, in form or manner, between him and the hero, except that they were both tall men." Yet such was the fact. Morris, in his diary, under date of "June 5, 1789," says: "Go to M. Houdon's. He's been waiting for me a long time. I stand for his statue of General Washington, being the humble employment of a manikin. This is literally taking the advice of St. Paul, to be all things to all men. The foregoing facts are presented in contrast with the creations of fancy which an orator recently put forth as the forms of real history, in the following words: “Houdon, after taking a mould of Washington's face, persisted to make a cast of his entire person. * * * * The hero and the sagethe man of supreme dignity, of spotless purity and the most veiled modesty, laid his sacred person bare and prone before the eyes of art and affection! * * * *The cast of the body was left to the care of his workmen, but that of the head was reserved in his own hands." All this is utterly untrue. The workmen of Houdon, it is known, never joined him, and no such scene as above described ever occurred at Mount Vernon. Six months before Houdon's arrival at Mount Vernon, another artist was domiciled there. It was Robert Edge Pine, a very small, morbidly irritable Englishman, who came to America in 1784, with the rare reputation of "king's painter," and with the lofty design of procuring portraits of the most distinguished men of the Revolution, as materials for a series of historical paintings of the war then just ended. His wife and daughters, who came with him, were as diminutive as himself, and the family appeared almost like pigmies. Pine had been a student of art under Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was highly esteemed by that artist, and was popular with a large number of influential men in England. He brought letters of introduction to Francis Hopkinson, of Philadelphia; and the first portrait that he painted after his arrival in this country, was of that gentleman. It was finished early in 1785, and was first well engraved by Longacre, and published in the American Portrait Gallery. Robert Morris also patronized him, and built a studio for him in Eighth street, in Philadelphia. Pine's republican proclivities made him unpopular with the ministerial party at home, and gave him corresponding sympathy in America. He found constant employment for his pencil in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Annapolis, and in several places in Virginia. He went to Mount Vernon in May, 1785, with a letter of introduction to Washington from Francis Hopkinson, in which the chief was requested to give the painter sittings, in furtherance of his grand design of composing scenes of the War for Independence. He was cordially received, and remained there three weeks. During that time Washington wrote as follows to Mr. Hopkinson, dated at Mount Vernon, May 16, 1785: "DEAR SIR: "In for a penny in for a pound,' is an ola adage. I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painter's pencil, that I am now altogether at their beck, and sit, like |