AUDUBON'S GREATEST TRIUMPH 199 



Plates which were wholly the work of Lizars have 

 naturally become extremely rare; they were evidently 

 disregarded by Audubon when he recorded on July 2, 

 1827, that he had given Mr. Children a proof of his 

 first number, which he called "the first in existence," 

 and declared that the two guineas then received was the 

 first money that had been returned to his hands. Lizars' 

 initial number had actually been finished in the previous 

 winter, and a copy of this is recorded as having been 

 given to the daughter of Sir Walter Scott on the 9th 

 of March, 1827. 



When Audubon had finally closed all his business 

 affairs in Edinburgh and London, late in the summer 

 of 1839, he returned to America, with the remaining 

 members of his family, and settled in New York, where 

 he purchased a house at Number 84 White Street, then 

 in the uptown district. 



An anonymous writer in the London Athenceum 17 

 in giving a final review of Audubon's labors in 1839, 

 paid this interesting tribute : 



It seems but as yesterday that we were walking about with 

 a transatlantic stranger, picturesque enough in his appearance 

 and garb, to arrest the eye of every passing gazer; a tall 

 stalwart man, with hair sufficiently long to qualify him to serve 

 as a model to Gray's "Bard," and trousers ample almost as 

 petticoats of "good Harmony cloth," so absorbed in the en- 

 thusiastic prosecution of his gigantic plan a life's labour 

 as to be heedless of the singularity of those meteoric locks, and 

 those liberal nether garments. Some dozen of years, however, 

 have elapsed since that day ; the American Woodsman's hair 

 long since cut short has grown white; his magnificent under- 

 taking is completed, and he is now on the point of quitting 

 England, to settle himself for the remainder of his days whether 



17 See Bibliography, No. 142. 



