Page:Audubon and His Journals.djvu/283

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THE EUROPEAN JOURNALS
235

holding up with both hands her voluminous blue riding-habit, and with a ton very unbecoming her fine eyes and sweet face. She bowed carelessly, and said: "Compliments, sir;" and perceiving how much value she put on herself, I gave her the best seat in the room. For some time she sat without a word; when her brother began to put questions, however, she did also, and so fast and so searchingly that I thought them Envoies Extraordinaires from either Temminck or Cuvier. Mr. Adamson, who sat by all the time, praised me, when they had gone, for my patience, and took me home to dine with him en famille. A person (a glazier, I suppose), after seeing about a hundred pictures, asked me if I did not want glass and frames for them. How I wish I was in America's dark woods, admiring God's works in all their beautiful ways.

April 17. Whilst I was lying awake this morning waiting for it to get light, I presently recollected I was in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and recalled the name of Smollett, no mean man, by the bye, and remembered his eulogium of the extraordinary fine view he obtained when travelling on foot from London to this place, looking up the Tyne from Isbet Hill, and I said, "If Smollett admired the prospect, I can too," and leaped from my bed as a hare from his form on newly ploughed ground at the sound of the sportsman's bugle, or the sight of the swift greyhound. I ran downstairs, out-of-doors, and over the Tyne, as if indeed a pack of jackals had been after me. Two miles is nothing to me, and I ascended the hill where poor Isbet, deluded by a wretched woman, for her sake robbed the mail, and afterwards suffered death on a gibbet; and saw—the sea! Far and wide it extended; the Tyne led to it, with its many boats with their coaly burdens. Up the river the view was indeed enchanting; the undulating meadows sloped gently to the water's edge on either side, and the Larks that sprang up before me, welcoming the sun's rise, animated my thoughts so much