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[429] worship. The pair were sometimes spoken of in that day as ‘two old-world men who sat by the fire together, and upheld each other in aversion to the then prevailing state of things.’

I twice had the pleasure of seeing Washington Allston. My first sight of him was in my early youth when, being in Boston with my father for a brief visit, my dear tutor, Joseph G. Cogswell, undertook to give us this pleasure. Mr. Allston's studio was in Cambridge port. He admitted no one within it during his working hours, save occasionally his friend Franklin Dexter, who was obliged to announce his presence by a particular way of knocking at the door. Mr. Cogswell managed to get possession of this secret, and when we drove to the door of the studio he made use of the well-known signal. ‘Dexter, is that you?’ cried a voice from within. A moment later saw us within the sanctuary.

My father was intending to order a picture from Mr. Allston, and this circumstance amply justified Mr. Cogswell, in his own opinion, for the stratagem employed to gain us admittance. Mr. Allston was surprised but not disconcerted by our entrance, and proceeded to do the honors of the rather bare apartment with genial grace. He had not then unrolled his painting of Belshazzar's Feast, which, begun many years before that time, had long been left in an unfinished condition.

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