ALEXANDER WILSON. 



97 



scribers. His varied adventures on these expeditions, and his 

 impressions of the people and places that he visited, are de- 

 lightfully recorded in the letters which Mr. Grosart collected. 



At Hanover, Pa., he met a judge who condemned his work 

 because " it was not within the reach of the commonality, and 

 therefore inconsistent with our republican institutions." Wil- 

 son turned the tables on this learned man by showing that the 

 judge's elegant three-story brick house was open to the same 

 objection ; and then in a more serious vein pointed out to him 

 the benefit which a young, rising nation can derive from science, 

 " till he began to show such symptoms of intellect as to seem 

 ashamed of what he said." From Pittsburg Wilson made his 

 way in a skiff down the Ohio over seven hundred miles, nearly 

 to Louisville, stopping at the important towns on the way. 



At Louisville one of the persons on whom he called was 

 Audubon, then thirty years old and engaged in business. 

 Audubon has left an account of this meeting, in which he thus 

 describes Wilson's physical appearance : " How well do I re- 

 member him as he walked up to me! His long, rather hooked 

 nose, the keenness of his eyes, and his prominent cheek bones 

 stamped his countenance with a peculiar character. . . . His 

 stature was not above the middle size." Audubon claims that 

 he was about to subscribe for the Ornithology, but a compli- 

 mentary reference to his own knowledge of birds, spoken in 

 French by his partner, checked him. " Vanity and the en- 

 comium of my friend prevented me from subscribing," he 

 writes, and to this he adds that he lent some of his drawings 

 to Wilson, and hunted with him, obtaining some birds which 

 the latter had never seen before. Audubon states also that 

 being in Philadelphia some time afterward he called on Wilson, 

 who received him with civility, but did not speak of birds or 

 drawings. Against this story must be set the following ex- 

 tract from Wilson's diary published in the ninth volume of the 

 Ornithology : " March 23d, I bade adieu to Louisville, to which 

 place I had four letters of recommendation, and was taught to 

 expect much of everything there ; but neither received one act 

 of civility from those to whom I was recommended, one sub- 

 scriber, nor one new bird ; though I delivered my letters, ran- 

 sacked the woods repeatedly, and visited all the characters 

 likely to subscribe. Science or literature has not one friend 

 in this place." "We must take Audubon's account," says his 



