LITERARY WORK AV LONDON. 219 



began to make the drawings on the stone, and he laboured 

 away so assiduously, in spite of other work, that the book, 

 an exquisite ix>rtfolio of plates, was given to the public, as 

 Illustrations of the Birds of Jauiaica, in April, 1849. 

 Unhappily, however, the price at which he had under- 

 taken to bring out the coloured illustrations was so low 

 that there was, through an error in his calculations, a 

 slight loss on every copy subscribed for, and if the 

 demand for the book in this condition had been great, 

 he would have been ni dreadful straits. This was a 

 lesson for which he had himself alone to thank, and 

 he never made that particular error again. 



In February, 1848, he began his Birds, the second volume 

 of the popular series for the S.P.C.K., and being now more 

 prosperous, and secure of plenty of tolerably remunerative 

 work, he moved from the incommodious little house in 

 Richmond Terrace, to a pleasanter dwelling, No. 13, Tra- 

 falgar Terrace, De Beauvoir Square. At this time he was 

 greatly excited by the news of the Revolution in France, 

 and the rapid spread of revolutionary sentiment through 

 Europe, with the Chartist demonstration in London on 

 April 10. "All this," he writes, "greatly excites our hopes 

 of the near Advent ; " and from this time forward, for nearly 

 forty years, each political crisis in Europe reawakened in 

 his breast this vain hope of the sudden coming of the 

 Lord, and the rapture of believing Christendom into glory 

 without death. This minute and realistic observer of 

 natural objects possessed one facet of his soul on which 

 the rosy light of idealism never ceased to sparkle. He 

 was a visionary on one side of his brain, though a 

 biologist on the other. 



In June, 1848, he suggested to the Society for Pro- 

 moting Christian Knowledge that he should write them a 

 History of the Jews. They accepted the proposal, but he 



