markable. Take his British Birds, and in the tail-pieces to these two volumes you shall find the most touching presentations of nature in all her forms, animate and inanimate. There are the poachers tracking a hare in the snow; and the urchins who have accomplished the creation of a "snow man." In the humorous, there are the disappointed beggar leaving the gate open for the pigs and poultry to march over the good dame's linen which she is laying out to dry—or, what a methodist would call profane, the cat stealing the blind man's dinner whilst he is devoutly saying grace—or the thief who sees devils in every bush and stump of a tree—a sketch that Hogarth himself might envy. Then, in another strain, there is the strayed infant standing at the horses' heels, and pulling its tail, the mother in an agony flying over the stile—the sportsman who has slipped into the torrent; and the blind man and boy unconscious of "Keep on this side." In the satiric there is that best of burlesques upon military pomp, the four urchins astride of gravestones for horses, the first blowing a glass trumpet, and the others bedizened in tatters, with rush-caps and wooden swords.
Nor must we pass over his sea-side sketches—all inimitable. The cutter chasing the smuggler—is it not evident they are going at least ten knots an hour? The tired gulls sitting on the waves, every curled head of which seems big with mischief. What pruning of plumage, what stalkings and flappings and scratchings of the sand, are not depicted in that collection of sea-birds on the shore! What desolation is there in that sketch of coast after a storm, with the solitary rock, the ebb tide, the crab just venturing out, and the mast of the sunken vessel standing up through the treacherous waters! What truth and minute nature is in that tide coming in, each wave rolling higher than his predecessor, like a line of conquerors, and pouring in amidst the rocks with increasing aggression! And last and best,—there are his fishing scenes. What angler's heart but beats when he sees the pool-fisher deep in the water, his rod bending almost double with the rush of some tremendous trout or heavy salmon? Who does not recognize his boyish days in the fellow with the "set rods," sheltering himself from the soaking rain behind an old tree? What fisher has not seen yon "old codger" sitting by the river side, peering over his tackle, and putting on a brandling? It is needless to recapitulate. Bewick's landscapes, in short, are upon the same principle with his animals. They are, for the most part, portraits. They are the result of the keenest and most accurate observation. You perceive every stone and bunch of grass has had actual existence. His moors are north-country moors, neither Scotch nor English. They are the progeny of Cheviot, of Rumpside, of Simondside, and of the Carter. The tail-piece of the old man, pointing out to his boy an ancient monumental stone, reminds one of the Milfield Plain and Flodden Field. Having only delineated that in which he himself has taken delight, we may deduce his character from his pictures. His hearted love of his native county, its scenery, its manners, its airs, its men and women; his propensity
- "by himself to wander
- Adown some trotting burn's meander,
- An' no think lang ;"
his intense observation of nature and human life; his satirical and somewhat coarse humour; his fondness for maxims and old saws; his vein of worldly prudence now and then "cropping out," as miners call it, into daylight; his passion for the sea-side, and his delight in the angler's "solitary trade." All this, and more, the admirer of Bewick may deduce from his sketches.
We have sometimes almost wished that Bewick had been a painter. This is perhaps selfish—perhaps silly; yet we own we have often felt the wish. He would, undoubtedly, have made an admirable landscape-painter. We may be told, it is true, that tail-pieces do not require the filling up of larger pictures. But what landscape-painter of them all has materials for filling up better than Bewick? Had Bewick been a painter, one thing is certain—that he would not have been of the modern school; he would have been shy of the new-fangled academies; he would have painted, as one may say, by experiment rather than syllogism, and attempted to pourtray things as they are, not as they ought to be; he would have been content with actual Nature, and not tried to dress her up or refine her in some impossible metaphysical crucible. "Not to speak it profanely," Bewick is no man to attempt to improve upon God Almighty,
