Page:Stryker's American Register and Magazine, Volume 6, 1851.djvu/217

Rh passionately fond of music, so far as he could follow it,—and loved to have poetry read to him while he was making his birds upon paper (for drawing his rapid process hardly seemed to be.) He had all the grace, too, which the perfect command over every limb, great personal symmetry and muscular strength, could give.

"Even before Audubon came first to London, the American Woodsman had in some degree begun to wane before the gentleman Naturalist. The long hair had been cut off—the ample pantaloons taken in—the journal was locked up:—and while he was living in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, I recollect his bewailing his own degeneracy in getting up for a run to Hampstead so late as five in the morning."

Mr. Audubon afterwards returned repeatedly to the United States and pursued his former researches, till the appearance of his great work, the last part of which appeared at London, in 1839. It was published by subscription, at two hundred guineas a copy. An edition, in seven octavo volumes, with the plates greatly reduced in size, was afterwards published at New York, and finished in 1845. In that year, the plates of the first edition, which had been sent out from London, were destroyed by the great fire in that city in July. Five volumes of "Ornithological Biography" from his pen appeared at Philadelphia and London between 1831 and 1839.

In 1842, in connection with Dr. Bachman, he commenced a work entitled "The Quadrupeds of America," the last number of which appeared only a few months before his death. This work is considered a worthy companion to the "Ornithology."

During several of the last years of his life, Mr. Audubon mixed little in society; but he still preserved much of the sprightliness of his earlier years; and he never lost his simplicity of manners or cheerfulness of temper. Although he was justly classed with men of genius himself, he was accustomed to say that he had no faith in genius, and that a steady and continued application would make a man whatever he pleased, an opinion which is apt to be adopted by men who owe much to nature, although many facts prove that it is incorrect.

Most of Mr. Audubon's descriptions were made from his own observations and drawings; and in taking the latter, his plan was, to observe the animal closely for some time before he shot it, after which he immediately placed it in proper natural attitude, and sketched his drawing before it was cold. He complained that he could never get his colors to equal the beauty and brilliancy of the originals.

Of the character of his works, especially the "Ornithology," it is unnecessary to speak, as it is everywhere pronounced by the best