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whose name was unknown in this country until it was lately brought before the public by Lord Byron. His history is still a novelty. Accident made me acquainted with some incidents respecting him by means of an American friend. Memoirs of this extraordinary individual, or rather part of his singular career, have been published on the other side of the Atlantic, but I believe have never yet reached England. Boon originally belonged to the state of North Carolina, where he cultivated a farm. In company with five other individuals, he left that province in 1769, and journeyed to a river that falls into the Ohio, with a view of settling upon it. The spot which he chose was situated in the state of Kentucky, in which he thus became the first settler. He began by erecting a house, surrounded by a stockade or close palisado, formed of the square trunks of trees, placed close together and sunk deep in the earth, a precaution absolutely necessary to be taken in a frontier settlement continually exposed to the attacks of the native Indians. This fort as the Americans call such defences, was situated about seventy-five miles from the present town of Frankfort, and the party gave it the name of Fort Boonsborough; and thus was formed the primitive settlement of the state of Kentucky, which now has a population of 564.317. He entered his lands and secured them, as he imagined, so as to give him a safe title, and was completely established in them in the year 1775. He seems, however, to have experienced various attacks from hostile tribes of Indians. At this place, with no common resolution, and with a fortitude that argued him to be of the order of superior men, far removed from military succour, in a wild and savage forest, and with a constant fear of attack from a ferocious enemy, he steadily and undauntedly proceeded to mature his plans. When bis little fort was completed, he removed his establishment to it from North Carolina, conducting thither his wife and daughters, the first white females that had ever trod on the shores of the Kentucky river. He was soon joined by

four or five other families, and thirty or forty men settlers. They had several times repulsed the attacks of the Indians with bloodshed; and at length, while making salt from some brine springs at no great distance from his home, he was surprised with twentyseven of his settlers, by upwards of a hundred, who were on their march to renew their attacks on his infant colony. He capitulated with them on condition that their lives should be spared, and they were immediately marched away to an Indian town on the Miami river, a long distance off, and finally conducted to the British governor, Hamilton, at Detroit, the Indians scrupulously abiding by the terms on which Boon had surrendered to them. These sons of nature, however, got so attached to their prisoner on their march, that they would not resign him to the British governor, nor even part with him for a hundred pounds generously offered for him by the British officers, in order that he might return home to his family; but leaving his fellow-settlers behind, they took him away with them again, adopted him into the family of one of their chiefs, and allowed him to hunt or spend his time in the way most agreeable to his inclination. One day he went with them to make salt, when he met with four hundred and fifty warriors painted and armed, and ready to set out against Fort Boonsborough. He immediately determined, at a great risk of his life, to make his escape, trembling as he was for the fate of his family and settlement. In four days he reached Boonsborough, a distance of one hundred and sixty miles, making only one meal by the way. Not a minute was to be lost, and he began to strengthen his log defences and fortify himself as strongly as possible. The Indians, finding he had escaped, delayed their attack; and having received a reinforcement of men, in which were a few troops, he determined to brave all dangers and defend himself to the last. At length a ferocious Indian army made its appearance. Boon encouraged his little garrison to maintain an obstinate defence, death being preferable to captivity, though his hope of resisting with

success was but faint. The cruel and savage enemy also, they might well calculate, would become doubly enraged by a protracted resistance; but like brave men, determined to let fate do its worst and think nothing of final consequences, they let the Indian chief know their resolution. Upon this the latter demanded a parley with nine of the garrison; articles were proposed for an arrangement without bloodshed; but on signing them they were told it was the Indian custom to shake hands with each other by way of sealing their engagement. On complying, each Indian grappled his man in order to make him prisoner, but, by a miracle, eight out of the nine succeeded in extricating themselves, Boon being among the number, and they got safe into their garrison. A furious attack was now made upon the fort, which lasted nine days and nights, during which only two men were killed and four wounded by the besiegers, who in return suffered severely, and the logs of the fort were stuck full of the bullets which they fired. At length hostilities ceasing, Boon's wife, who on his first captivity supposing him killed, had set off with her family on horseback through the woods a long and dangerous distance in North Carolina, was fetched back by her husband a second time to his new residence, where he hoped for the future to pursue his peaceful occupations unmolested. His sufferings and perils had been great, but his courage and constancy had surmounted them all, and he had just reason to calculate at last upon a period of repose.

Boon, however, was not to end his days amid the advantages of social life. His horoscope had been cast, and discovered no common portion of malign influence. His courage and constancy, under the severest trials; his long and unremitting labours, in perfecting his infant settlement, almost entitled him to a civic crown; but how different was his reward! After his exemplary labours, after spending the best part of an honest life in rearing and providing for a numerous family, and having arrived at that period of existence when 53 ATHENEUM VOL. 14.

he might reasonably expect to enjoy the fruit of his exertions, and obtain some return for the fatigues and hazards of his preceding life; too old to begin another settlement, and that which he had begun so many years before in the heart of the wilderness, looking smiling around him, the prop of his old age, the pride of his hoary years, his family's hope when he should be laid low-he suddenly finds that he is possessed of nothing, that his eyes must be closed without a home, and that he must be an outcast in his grey hairs. His heart is torn, his feelings are lacerated by the chicanery of the law, which discovers that there is a defect in his title to the land of which he was the first settler, even in a state where no white man had put in the spade before him. Perhaps his thriv-` ing farm was envied by some new adventurer. The discovery was fatal to his happiness. While he fondly believed that his title was indisputable, his land was taken from him, his goods were sold, and he was deprived of his all. The province had been rapidly settling by his countrymen, and increasing civilization was accompanied by those vices which are its never-failing attendants. Knavery, in every form, marched with it; interest, at any sacrifice of honour and justice, became the reigning principle. The law, which in all countries inflicts nearly as much evil as it prevents, was made an instrument to dispossess him of his property, and he saw himself a wanderer and an outcast. His past labour, even to blood, had been in vain. Cut to the soul, with a wounded spirit, he still showed himself an extraordinary and eccentric man. He left for ever the state in which he had been the first to introduce a civilized populationwhere he had so boldly maintained himself against external attacks, and shown himself such an industrious and exemplary citizen; where he found no white man when he sat himself down amid the ancient woods, and left behind him half a million. He forsook it for ever; no intreaty could keep him within its bounds. Man, from whom he deserved every thing, had persecu

not starve. It does not appear that be talked much of the ingratitude of mankind towards him. He perhaps thought regret and complaint alike unavailing, and that his resolution of exiling himself in the back woods and the territories of the Indians was the best way of demonstrating the highspirited contempt and indignation he felt towards his countrymen, by whom he had been so unjustly treated. Boon seems to have possessed a great mind; congregated men had treated him with injustice and with cruelty, considering his claims upon them; he sought not to retaliate his injuries on individuals

ted and robbed him of all. He bade his friends and his family adieu for ever; he felt the tie which linked him to social life was broken. He took with him his rifle and a few necessaries, and crossing the Ohio, pursued his track till he was two or three bundred miles in advance of any white settlement. As the territory north of the Ohio was taken possession of, and peopling fast from the United States, he crossed the Mississippi, and plunged into the unknown and immense country on the banks of the Missouri, where the monstrous Mammoth is even now supposed to be in existence. On the shores of this mighty river he reared he felt not the passion of revenge, his rude log hut, to which he attached no idea of permanency, but held himself constantly ready to retire yet farther from civilized man, should he approach too near his desert solitude.

With the exception of a son,who resided with his father, according to some accounts, but without any one, according to others, his dog and gun were his only companions. He planted the seeds of a few esculent vegetables round his fragile dwelling, but his principal food he obtained by hunting. He has been seen seated on a log at the entrance of his hut by an exploring traveller, or far more frequently by the straggling Indian. His rifle generally Jay across his knees and his dog at his side, and he rarely went farther from home than the haunts of the deer and the wild turkey, which constituted his principal support. In his solitude he would sometimes speak of his past actions, and of his indefatigable labours, with a glow of delight on his counte. nance that indicated how dear they were to his heart, and would then become at once silent and dejected. He would survey his limbs, look at his shrivelled hands, complain of the dimness of his sight, and lifting the rifle to his shoulder take aim at a distant object, and say that it trembled before his vision, that his eyes were losing their power, rubbing them with his hands, and lamenting that his youth and manhood were gone, but hoping that his legs would serve him to the last of life, to carry him to spots frequented by the game, that he might

nor the wish to injure those who had injured him irreparably, and he deter mined to withdraw from their power. He felt that he could not be happy amid the heartless vices of society; that the desert and the forest, the Indian, the rattlesnake, and the Juagar, were preferable associates; that they bore no feigned aspect of kindness while they were secretly plotting his destruction; that they rarely inflicted evil without just provocation; and that the uncontrolled child of Nature was a preferable companion to the executors of laws, which to him at least, however beneficial they might in some cases be to others, were most cruel and unjust.

Thus he passed through life till he was between eighty and ninety years of age, contented in his wild solitude, and in his security from injustice and rapacity. About a twelvemonth ago, it is reported, he was found dead on his knees, with his rifle cocked and resting on the trunk of a fallen tree, as if he had just been going to take aim, most probably at a deer, when death suddenly terminated his earthly recollections of the ingratitude of his fellow-creatures, at a period when his faculties, though he had attained such an age, were not greatly impaired. Boonsborough is now a thriving town, and its name will ever remain as a testimony of its founder's sufferings, and the conduct of his fellow-citizens to wards him, in the midst of the freest nation of ancient or modern times.

THE

SITTING FOR ONE'S PICTURE.

(New Mon.)

HERE is a pleasure in sitting for one's picture, which many persons are not aware of. People are coy on this subject at first, coquet with it, and pretend not to like it, as is the case with other venial indulgences, but they soon get over their scruples, and become resigned to their fate. There is a conscious vanity in it; and vanity is the aurum potabile in all our pleasures, the true elixir of human life. The sitter at first affects an air of indifference, throws himself into a slovenly or awk ward position, like a clown when he goes a courting for the first time, but gradually recovers himself, attempts an attitude, and calls up his best looks, the moment he receives intimation that there is something about him that will do for a picture. The beggar in the street is proud to have his picture painted, and would almost sit for nothing the finest lady in the land is as fond of sitting to a favourite artist as of seating herself before her looking-glass; and the more so, as the glass, in this case is sensible of her charms, and does all it can to fix or heighten them. Kings lay aside their crowns to sit for their portraits, and poets their laurels to sit for their busts! I am sure, my father has as little love for the art as most persons; yet when he had sat to me a few times (now some twenty years ago), he grew evidently uneasy when it was a fine day, that is, when the sun shone into the room, so that we could not paint; and when it became cloudy, began to bustle about, and ask me if I was not getting ready. Poor old room! Does the sun still shine into thee, or does Hope fling its colours round thy walls, gaudier than the rainbow? No, never while thy oak-pannels endure, will they inclose such fine movements of the brain as passed through mine, when the fresh hues of nature gleamed from the canvass, and my heart silently breathed the names of Rembrandt and Correggio! Between my father's love of sitting and mine of painting, we hit upon a tolerable likeness at last; and Megilp (that bane of the English school) has destroyed as fine an old Noncon

formist head as one could hope to see in these degenerate times.

The fact is, that the having one's picture painted is like the creation of another self; and that is an idea, of the repetition or reduplication of which no man is ever tired, to the thousandth reflection. It has been said that lovers are never tired of each other's company, because they are always talking of themselves. This seems to be the bond of connexion (a delicate one it is!) between the painter and the sitter

they are always thinking and talking of the same, the picture, in which their self-love finds an equal counter-part. There is always something to be done or to be altered, that touches that sensi tive chord--this feature was not exactly hit off, something is wanting to the nose or to the eye-brows, it may perhaps be as well to leave out this mark or that blemish, if it were possible to recall an expression that was remarked a short time before, it would be an indescribable advantage to the picture-a squint or a pimple on the face handsomely avoided may be a link of attachment ever after. He is no mean friend who conceals from ourselves, or only gently indicates, our obvious defects to the world. The sitter, by his repeated, minute, fidgetty inquiries about himself may be supposed to take an indirect and laudable method of arriving at selfknowledge; and the artist, in self-defence, is obliged to cultivate a scrupulous tenderness towards the feeling of his sitter, lest he should appear in the character of a spy upon him. I do not conceive there is a stronger call upon secret gratitude than the having made a favourable likeness of any one; nor a surer ground of jealousy and dislike than the having failed in the attempt. A satire or a lampoon in writing is bad enough; but here we look doubly foolish, for we are ourselves parties to the plot, and have been at considerable pains to give evidence against ourselves. I have never had a plaster cast taken of myself: in truth, I rather shrink from the experiment; for I know I should be very much mortified

if it did not turn out well, and should never forgive the unfortunate artist who had lent his assistance to prove that I looked like a blockhead!

The late Mr. Opie used to remark that the most sensible people made the best sitters; and I incline to his opinion, especially as I myself am an excellent sitter. Indeed, it seems to me a piece of mere impertinence not to sit as still as one can in these circumstances. I put the best face I can upon the matter, as well out of respect to the artist as to myself. I appear on my trial in the court of physiognomy, and am as anxious to make good a certain idea I have of myself, as if I were playing a part on a stage. I have no notion, how people go to sleep, who are sitting for their pictures. It is an evident sign of want of thought and of internal resources. There are some individuals, all whose ideas are in their hands and feet -make them sit still, and you put a stop to the machine altogether. The volatile spirit of quicksilver in them turns to a caput mortuum. Children are particularly sensible of this constraint, from their thoughtlessness and liveliness. It is the next thing with them to wearing the fool's cap at school: yet they are proud of having their pictures taken, ask when they are to sit again,and are mightily pleased when they are done. Charles the First's children seem to have been good sitters, and the great dog sits like a Lord Chancellor.

The second time a person sits, and the view of the features is determined, the head seems fastened in an imaginary vice, and he can hardly tell what to make of his situation. He is certainly overstepping the bounds of duty, and is tied down to certain lines and limits chalked out upon the canvass, to him "invisibly or dimly seen" on the throne where he is exalted. The painter has now a difficult task to manage-to throw in his gentle admonitions "A little more this way, sir," or "You bend rather too forward, madam," and ought to have a delicate white hand, that he may venture to adjust a straggling lock of hair, or by giving a slight turn to the head, co-operate in the practical attainment of a position. These are the ticklish and tiresome

places of the work, before much progress is made, where the sitter grows peevish and abstracted, and the painter more anxious and particular than he was the day before. Now is the time to fling in a few adroit compliments, or to introduce general topics of conversation. The artist ought to be a well-informed and agreeable man-able to expatiate on his art, and abounding in lively and characteristic anecdotes. Yet he ought not to talk too much, or to grow too animated; or the picture is apt to stand still, and the sitter to be aware of it. Accordingly, the best talkers in the profession have not always been the most successful portraitpainters. For this purpose it is desirable to bring a friend, who may relieve guard, or fill up the pauses of conversation, occasioned by the necessary attention of the painter to his business, and by the involuntary reveries of the sitter on what his own likeness will bring forth; or a book, a newspaper, or a portfolio of prints may serve to amuse the time. When the sitter's face begins to flag, the artist may then properly start a fresh topic of discourse, and while his attention is fixed on the graces called out by the varying interest of the subject, and the model anticipates, pleased and smiling, their being transferred every moment to the canvass, nothing is wanted to improve and carry to its height the amicable understanding and mutual satisfaction & goodwill subsisting between those two persons,so happily occupied with each other.

Sir Joshua must have had a fine time of it with his sitters. Lords, ladies, generals, and authors, opera-singers, musicians, the learned and the polite, besieged his doors, and found an unfailing welcome. What a rustling of silks! What a fluttering of flounces and brocades! What a cloud of pow der and perfumes! What a flow of periwigs! What an exchange of civilities and of titles! What a recognition of old friendships and an introduction of new acquaintance and sitters! It must, I think, be allowed that this is the only mode in which genius can form a legitimate union with wealth and fashion. There is a secret and sufficient tie in interest and vanity.

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