SCHOOL DAYS. 5 



to attend to his education, to be sent to school, to be tutored 

 at home. The elder Audubon had known too many changes 

 of fortune to believe in the fickle goddess ; and notwithstand- 

 ing his wife's tears and entreaties, determining to educate his son 

 thoroughly, as the safest inheritance he could leave him, he sent 

 the young gentleman straightway to school. Audubon laments 

 that education in France was but miserably attended to during 

 the years that succeeded the great political convulsions. Military 

 education had usurped all the care of the First Empire, and the 

 wants of the civil population were but sparingly heeded. His 

 father, from natural predilections, was desirous that the boy 

 should become a sailor, a cadet in the French navy, or an 

 engineer ; and with these views before him, he decided on the 

 course of study his son should follow. Mathematics, drawing, 

 geography, fencing, and music, were among the branches 

 of education prescribed; it being evident that a complex 

 course of instruction was not among the misapprehensions the 

 old sailor's professional prejudices had nurtured. Audubon 

 had, for music -master, an adept who taught him to play adroitly 

 upon the violin, flute, flageoletj and guitar. For drawing- 

 master, he had David, the chief inventor and worshipper of the 

 abominations which smothered the aspirations of French artists 

 during the revolutionary generation. Nevertheless it was to 

 David that Audubon owed his earliest lessons in tracing 

 objects of natural history, and the mannerism of the great 

 French artist may still be traced in certain pedantries dis- 

 cernible in Audubon's style of drawing. Audubon was," more- 

 over, a proficient in dancing, — an accomplishment which in after 

 years he had more opportunities of practising among bears than 

 among men. 



Influenced by the military fever of his time, he dreamed in 

 his school days of being a soldier ; but happily for natural 

 science his adventurous spirit foimd another outlet. Fortunately 

 his instruction was under the practical guidance of his mother, 

 and large scope was allowed him for indulging in nest-hunting 

 propensities. Supplied with a haversack of provisions, he made 

 frequent excursions into the country, and usually returned loaded 

 with objects of natural history, birds' nests, birds' eggs, specimens 

 of moss, curious stones, and other objects attractive to his eye. 



