128 LIFE OF AUDUBON. 



CHAPTEE XXV. 



Provincial Canvass fob Subscribers — Visit to London-t-Sir Thomas 

 Lawrence — The American Minister — PicTxniB of the Kins of 

 England's Private Life — The Great Work in Progress — Search 

 fob a Colourer — Horrors of London — The Great Work Presented 

 to the King. 



Quitting Edinburgh with, a high heart, the indomitable 

 naturalist began his provincial canvass, meeting, as is usual in 

 such cases, with two kinds of treatment — very good and very 

 bad. He visited in succession Newcastle, Leeds, York, Shrews- 

 bury, and Manchester, securing a few subscribers at two hundred 

 pounds a head in each place. His diary chronicles minutely all 

 his affairs — dining-out, tea-drinking, "receiving," — but none 

 are very interesting, and all are pervaded, too, by a quite 

 feminine flutter of admiration for big people. The only incident 

 at all worth recording is a visit paid to Bewick the engraver, 

 but as it adds nothing to our knowledge of one who was a real 

 genius in his way we pass on to metal more attractive— rto 

 London, where Audubon continued his canvass, with great success 

 among the aristocracy. From a confused heap of memoranda 

 we take a few notes of this London visit, suppressing much, 

 and somewhat doubtful of the relevancy even of what we select, 

 " Sir Thomas Lawrence. — My first call on this great artist 

 and idolized portrait-painter of Great Britain, whose works are 

 known over the whole world, was at half-past eight in the 

 morning. I was assured he would be as hard at work at that 

 time as I usually am. I took with me my letters and portfolio, 



