?he Ear on Rothschild. 383 



lished. On seeing them we were told that he ordered 

 the bearer to take them to his house, which was done di- 

 rectly. Number after number was sent and delivered to 

 the Baron, and after eight or ten months my son made 

 out his account and sent it by Mr. Havell, my engiaver, 

 to his banking-house. The Baron looked at it with amaze 

 ment, and cried out, ' What, a hundred pounds for birds ! 

 Why, sir, I will give you five pounds, and not a farthing 

 more ! ' Representations were made to him of the mag- 

 nificence and expense of the work, and how pleased 

 his Baroness and wealthy children would be to have a 

 copy ; but the great financier was unrelenting. The copy 

 of the work was actually sent back to Mr. Havell's shop, 

 and as I found that instituting legal proceedings against 

 him would cost more than it would come to, I kept the 

 work, and afterwards sold it to a man with less money 

 but a nobler heart. What a distance there is between 

 two such men as the Baron Rothschild of London and 

 the merchant of Savannah ! " 



Audubon remained in London looking after his work 

 and interests there until the fall of 1834, when he went 

 with his family to Edinburgh, where he hired a house and 

 spent a year and a half. 



There is no journal describing the incidents of that 

 residence in Edinburgh ; and it is probable that Audubon 

 did not keep a daily record there at all. The journal was 

 written chiefly with the design to keep his wife and chil- 

 dren informed of all his doings when he was absent from 

 them, and they were with him during this period, and so 

 there was no necessity for it ; and secondly, he was daily 

 so busily occupied with other writing that he had no time 

 to devote to that, or even his favorite work of drawing 

 and painting. Some idea of the amount of his labor at 

 that period may be inferred from the fact, that the intro- 

 duction to volume second of his "American Ornitholog 



