Hudson, he glided over the broad lakes, and sought the wildest solitudes of the pathless and gloomy forests.

There it was, he tells us, in these forests, that, for the first time, he communed with himself as to the possible event of his visiting Europe. His drawings had multiplied on his hands in spite of all disastrous chances—and he began to fancy them under the hands of the graver. We say in spite of all disastrous chances.

"An accident which happened to two hundred of my original drawings, nearly put a stop to my researches in ornithology. I shall relate it, merely to show you how far enthusiasm for by no other name can I call the persevering zeal with which I laboured-may enable the observer of nature to surmount the most disheartening obstacles. I left the village of Henderson, in Kentucky, situated on the bank of the Ohio, where I resided for several years, to proceed to Philadelphia on business. I looked to all my drawings before my departure, placed them carefully in a wooden box, and gave them in charge to a relative, with injunctions to see that no injury should happen to them. My absence was of several months; and when I returned, after having enjoyed the pleasures of home for a few days, I inquired after my box, and what I was pleased to call my treasure. The box was produced, and opened ;—but, reader, feel for me-a pair of Norway rats had taken possession of the whole, and had reared a young family amongst the gnawed bits of paper, which, but a few months before, represented nearly a thousand inhabitants of the air! The burning heat which instantly rushed through my brain was too great to be endured, without affecting the whole of my nervous system. I slept not for several nights, and the days passed like days of oblivion, -until the animal powers being recalled into action, through the strength of my constitution, I took up my gun, my note-book, and my pencils, and went forth to the woods as gaily as if nothing had happened. I felt pleased that I might now make much better drawings than before, and, ere a period not exceeding three years had elapsed, I had my portfolio filled again."

That such a heroic adventurer in the pursuit of knowledge should live and die obscure, was not in the power

But Audubon was born under

of the most malignant star. a lucky conjunction of propitious planets, and already anticipated his fame. "Happy days! and nights of pleasing dreams! I read over the catalogue of my collection, and thought how it might be possible for an unconnected and unaided individual like myself to accomplish the grand scheme. I improved the whole as much as was in my power; and as I daily retired farther from the haunts of men, determined to leave nothing undone, which my labour, my time, or my purse could accomplish." Eighteen months elapsed-Audubon returned to his family, then in Louisiana, and having explored every portion of the vast woods around, at last sailed towards the Old World.

As he approached the coast of England, he tells us that the despondency of his spirits became great. True that he had with him letters from American friends, and statesmen of great eminence, but he knew not an individual in the country, and his situation appeared precarious in the extreme. For a few days in Liverpool," not a glance of sympathy did he meet in his wanderings;" and he sighed for his woods. But very soon all his prospects brightened; for those ardent friends of merit, the Rathbones, the Roscoes, the Trails, the Chorleys, and the Mellies, and others too, took the stranger by the hand; "and so kind," says the grateful Audubon, " and beneficent, nay, so generously kind have they all been towards me, that I can never cancel the obligation. My drawings were publicly exhibited and publicly praised. Joy swelled in my heart. The first difficulty was surmounted. Honours which, on application being made through my friends, Philadelphia had refused, Liverpool fairly awarded." In Manchester, his reception was equally honourable to the Greggs, the Lloyds, the Sergeants, the Holmes, the Blackwalls, the Bentleys,

d many others-names which, as his gratitude delights to record, so is it pleasant to us to name them on this occasion. Had his reception in Liverpool and Manchester been cold or forbidding, in all probability Audubon had returned to America, and the world perhaps never have heard of him or his magnificent works. "Friends," says he, with a touching simplicity, "pressed me to accompany them to the pretty villages of Bakewell, Matlock, and

Buxton. It was a jaunt of pure enjoyment. Nature was then at her best, at least such was the feeling of our whole party; the summer was full of promise."

Soon after his arrival in Edinburgh, where he soon found many friends, he opened his exhibition. Four hundred drawings-paintings in water-colours-of about two thousand birds, covered the walls of the Institution-Hall, in the Royal Society Buildings, and the effect was like magic. The spectator imagined himself in the forest. All were of the size of life, from the wren and the humming-bird to the wild turkey and the bird of Washington. But what signified the mere size? The colours were all of life too-bright as when borne in beaming beauty through the woods. There too were their attitudes and postures, infinite as they are assumed by the restless creatures, in motion or rest, in their glee and their gambols, their loves and their wars, singing, or caressing, or brooding, or preying, or tearing one another into pieces. The trees, too, on which they sat or sported, all true to nature, in bole, branch, spray, and leaf; the floweringshrubs and the ground-flowers, the weeds and the very grass, all American-so too the atmosphere and the skies -all transatlantic. 'Twas a wild and poetical vision of the heart of the New World, inhabited as yet almost wholly by the lovely or noble creatures that "own not man's dominion." There we beheld them all; there was a picture of their various life. How different from stuffed feathers in glass cases though they too "shine well where they stand" in our College Museum! There many a fantastic tumbler played his strange vagaries in the air-there many a cloud-cleaver swept the skies-there living gleams glanced through the forest glades-there meteor-like plumage shone in the wood-gloom-there strange shapes stalked stately along the shellbright shores-and there, halcyons all, fair floaters hung in the sunshine on waveless seas. That all this wonderful creation should have been the unassisted work of one man-in his own country wholly unbefriended, was a thought that awoke towards "the American woodsman" feelings of more than admiration, of the deepest personal interest; and the hearts of all warmed towards Audubon, who were capable of con

ceiving the difficulties, and dangers, and sacrifices, that must have been encountered, endured, and overcome, before genius had thus embodied these the glory of its innumerable triumphs.

The impression produced on all minds, learned and unlearned, by this exhibition, was such as to encourage Audubon to venture on the dangerous design of having the whole engraved. Dangerous it might well be called, seeing that the work was to contain four hundred plates and two thousand figures. "A work," says Cuvier, "conceived and executed on so vast a plan has but one fault, that its expense must render it inaccessible to the greatest number of those to whom it will be the most necessary. Yet is the price far from being exorbitant. One livraison of five plates costs two guineas; and thus the five livraisons can be had at no very great annual expense. Most desirable at least it is, as well for the interests of art as of science, that all the great public bodies, and all persons of wealth who love to enrich their libraries with works of splendour, should provide themselves with that of Audubon." "It will depend," says Swainson, in the same spirit, "on the powerful and the wealthy, whether Britain shall have the honour of fostering such a magnificent undertaking. It will be a lasting monument, not only to the memory of its author, but to those who employ their wealth in patronising genius, and in supporting the national credit. If any publication deserves such a distinction, it is surely this; inasmuch as it exhibits a perfection in the higher attributes of zoological painting, never before attempted. To represent the passions and the feelings of birds, might, until now, have been well deemed chimerical. Rarely, indeed, do we see their outward forms represented with any thing like nature. In my estimation, not more than three painters ever lived who could draw a bird. Of these, the lamented Barrabaud, of whom France may be justly proud, was the chief. He has long passed away; but his mantle has, at length, been recovered in the forests of America."

Generous and eloquent-but, in the line printed in italics, obscure as an oracle. Barrabaud and Audubon are two-why not have told us who is the third? Can Mr.

Swainson mean himself? We have heard as much hinted; if so, we cannot but admire his modesty in thus remaining the anonymous hero of his own panegyric. If not so, then has he done himself great injustice, for he is a beautiful bird-painter and drawer, as all the world knows, though assuredly in genius far inferior to Audubon. Is the third Bewick? If so, why shun to name "the genius that dwelt on the banks of the Tyne?" If not so, Mr. Swainson may live and die assured, in spite of this sentence of exclusion from the trio, that Bewick will in sæcula sæculorum sit on the top of the tree of fame, on the same branch with the most illustrious, nor is there any fear of its breaking, for it is strong, and the company destined to bestride it, select.

Audubon speaks modestly of his great work, but with the enthusiasm and confidence, natural and becoming, in a man of such extraordinary genius. We cannot do better than employ, when they come to us, his own words. Not only, then, is every object, as a whole, of the natural size, but also every portion of each object. The compass aided him in its delineation, regulated and corrected each part, even to the very fore-shortening. The bill, feet, legs, and claws, the very feathers as they project one beyond another, have been accurately measured. The birds, almost all of them, were killed by himself, and were regularly drawn on or near the spot. The positions, he observes, may, perhaps, in some instances, appear outré; but such supposed exaggerations can afford subjects of criticism only to persons unacquainted with the feathered tribes, for nothing can be more transient or varied than the attitudes of birds. For example, the heron, when warming itself in the sun, will sometimes drop its wings several inches, as if they were dislocated; the swan may often be seen floating with one foot extended from the body; and some pigeons turn quite over when playing in the air. The flowers, plants, or portions of the trees which are attached to the principal objects, have always been chosen from amongst those in the vicinity of which the birds were found, and are not, as some persons have thought, the trees or plants on which they always feed or perch. We may mention, too, that Audubon invented ways of placing birds, dead or alive,