780 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. 



an equally striking picture of Audubon as he appeared in the 'jterary circles 

 of Scotland : " When, some five years ago, we first set eyes on him, in a 

 party of literati, in ' stately Edinborough throned on crags,' hrj was such an 

 American woodsman as took the shine out of us modern Athenians. 

 Though dressed, of course, somewhat after the fashion of ourselves, his long 

 raven locks hung curling over his shoulders, yet unshorn from the wilderness. 

 They were shaded across his open forehead with a simple elegance, such as 

 a civilized Christian might be supposed to give his ' fell of hair,' v/htn prac- 

 tising ' every man his own perruquier' in some liquid mirror in the forest 

 giade, employing, perhaps, for a comb, the claw of the bald ea/.de. His sal- 

 low, fine-featured face bespoke a sort of wild independence ; and then such 

 an eye, keen as that of the falcon ! His foreign accent and broken English 

 speech — for he is of French descent — removed him still further out of the 

 commonplace circle of this every-day world of ours ; and his whole demeanor 

 — it might be with us partly imagination — was colored to our thought by a 

 character of conscious freedom and dignity, which he had habitually acquired 

 in his long and lonely wanderings among the woods, where he had lived in 

 the uncompanied love and delight of nature, and in the studious observation 

 of all the ways of her winged children, that forever fluttered over his paths 

 and roosted on the tree at whose feet he lay at night, beholding them still 

 the sole images that haunted his dreams." 



An unfinished portrait represents him in his woodland dres6, taken on 

 his return from the Rocky Mountains. It is a half-length, life-size, the head 

 a little thrown back, the keen eyes undimmed, though the face shows deep 

 lines of age and thought. He holds his gun in his hand, and his backwoods- 

 man's coat of green baize with fur collar and cuffs is but roughly painted. It 

 was never completed by his son, as the old man never retained his woodland 

 garb longer than he could help, and one of his first steps on returning to 

 civilized life was to remove the greater part of his luxuriant hair and beard. 



We have recounted at greater length the early years of struggle than the 

 later years of fame and success. It is in the narrative of his days of wander- 

 ing, of poverty, of neglect, that the true lesson of Audubon's life is taught. 

 He had one object before him, and nothing deterred him from his quest ; 

 neither hardship, nor difficulty, nor misconstruction, nor the opinion of the 

 world. Great as his works may be, much as they may do to foster a love of 

 nature and of nature's works, Audubon's greatest, most endearing, most 

 effective work is the example he has set, and the lesson of unselfish persever- 

 ance which his life teaches. 



