SIR,--Your favors of April 16 and 19, on the subject of the portraits of Columbus and Americus Vespucius were received on the 30th. While I resided at Paris, knowing that these portraits and those of some other of the early American worthies were in the gallery of Medicis at Florence, I took measures for engaging a good artist to take and send me copies of them. I considered it as even of some public concern that our country should not be without the portraits of its first discoverers. These copies have already run the risks of transportations from Florence to Paris, to Philadelphia, to Washington, and lastly to this place, where they are at length safely deposited. You request me "to forward them to you at Philadelphia for the purpose of having engravings taken from them for a work you propose to publish, and you pledge your honor that they shall be restored to me in perfect safety." I have no doubt of the sincerity of your intentions in this pledge; and that it would be complied with as far as it would be in your power. But the injuries and accidents of their transportation to Philadelphia and back again are not within your control. Besides the rubbing through a land carriage of six hundred miles, a carriage may overset in a river or creek, or be crashed with everything in it. The frequency of such accidents to the stages renders all insurance against them impossible. And were they to escape the perils of this journey I should be liable to the same calls, and they to the same or greater hazards from all those in other parts of the continent who should propose to publish any work in which they might wish to employ engravings of the same characters. From public, therefore, as well as private considerations, I think that these portraits ought not to be hazarded from their present deposit. Like public records, I make them free to be copied, but, being as originals in this country, they should not be exposed to the accidents or injuries of travelling post. While I regret, therefore, the necessity of declining to comply with your request, I freely and with pleasure offer to receive as a guest any artist whom you shall think proper to engage, and will make them welcome to take copies at their leisure for your use. I wish them to be multiplied for safe preservation, and consider them as worthy a place in every collection. Indeed I do not know how it happened that Mr. Peale did not think of copying them while they were in Philadelphia; and I think it not impossible that either the father or the son might now undertake the journey for the use of their museum. On the ground of our personal esteem for them, they would be at home in my family.