MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 39 



that he immediately confessed his guilt, and on his 

 knees implored his pardon. This small sketch was 

 afterwards adopted as a tail-piece, which may be 

 seen in the first volume of the British Birds, p. 1 1 0.* 

 (First Edition.) 



Mr Bewick was a man of warm attachments, par- 

 ticularly to the younger branches of his family. It 

 is known that, during his apprenticeship, he seldom 

 failed to visit his parents once a week at Cherry-Burn, 

 distant about fourteen miles from Newcastle ; and 

 when the Tyne was so swelled with rain and land 

 floods, that he could not get across, it was his prac- 

 tice to shout over to them, and, having made inqui- 

 ries after the state of their health, to return home. 



In 1825, in a letter to an old crony in London, 

 after describing with a kind of enthusiastic pleasure 

 the domestic comforts which he daily enjoyed, he 

 says, " I might fill you a sheet in dwelling on the 

 merits of my young folks, without being a bit afraid 

 of any remarks that might be made upon me, such 



* In page 82 of the same volume is the representation of 

 a cart-horse running away with some affrighted boys, who 

 had got into the cart while the careless driver was drinking 

 in a hedge-alehouse. It is observable, that the rapidity of 

 the cart is finely expressed by the almost total disappear- 

 ance of the spokes of the wheel ; a circumstance, it is be- 

 lieved, never before noticed by an artist. 



