AUDUBON — THE HUNTER-NATURALIST. 97 



while he lived, and amidst the many and wearisome vicissi- 

 tudes which have befallen since, I have retained fresh and 

 unimpaired the memory of that journey through the moun- 

 tains, as one of the green places of the past, where the sun- 

 light always lives. 



Thus it was I came first to meet him, laurelled and grey, 

 my highest ideal of the Hunter-Naturalist, — the old Audubon ! 

 Ah, the grandeur of that man's life ! though it had filled my 

 f|^ own with poetic yearnings in my youth, yet they have lost 

 nothing in fire and earnest upward through my maturer 

 age ! Now that he is dead, and I can look upon his career with 

 sobered vision, undazzled by the prestige of presence, un- 

 biassed by personal afi'ection, and from the stand-point of 

 wide experience and comparison with other men, still I can 

 speak of as a reality what was once more like the thought of a 

 boy's daydream, — that in all the world's history of wonderful 

 men, there is not to my mind one story of life so filled with 

 beautiful romance as this of J. J. Audubon, considered in the 

 mere deatils of its facts. Take them in his own simple words 

 as furnished by himself incidentally, in the text of his great 

 work, and what a wondrous tale it is ! 



We win hear then from his own lips something of how 

 the greatest of the Hunter-Naturalists was developed, catch 

 glimpses of the boy-Audubon, artlessly conveyed through his 

 own memories and impressions of early scenes, yearnings 

 and impressions, up to the period of manly achievement ; of 

 doubts, of failure, and finally of gloriously consummated tri- 

 umph ! In his charming preface to the Biography of Birds, 

 written the March of 1831, he says of himself: — 



I received life and lisrht in the New World. When I had 



O 



hardly yet learned to walk, and to articulate those first words 



always so endearing to parents, the productions of Nature 



that lay spread all around, were constantly pointed out to 



me. They soon became my playmates ; and before my ideas 



were sufficiently formed to enable me to estimate the diffcr- 



7 



