AUDUBON AND WILSON. 121 
the heavens with a whiter and swifter cloud than any hoisted 
. by the combined fleets in the sky. And now, with canvas 
unrent, and masts unsprung, returned to the very buoy she 
left. Somewhat faded, indeed, in her apparelling—but her 
hull sound as ever—nor a speck of dry rot in her timbers— 
her keel unscathed by rock—her cut-water yet sharp as new- 
whetted scythe ere the mower renews his toil—her figure- 
head, that had so often looked out for squalls, now “natient 
as the brooding dove’—and her bowsprit—but let ~s man 
the main-brace; nor is there purer spirit—my trusty frére— 
in the Old World or the New. 
It was quite a Noctes. Audubon told us—by snatches— 
all his travels, history, with many an anecdote interspersed 
of the @wellers among the woods—bird, beast and man. 
All this and more he told us, with a cheerful voice and 
animated eyes, while the dusky hours were noiselessly wheel- 
ing the chariot of Night along the star-losing sky; and we 
too had something to tell him of our own home-loving obscu- 
rity, not ungladdened by studies sweet in the Forest—till 
Dawn yoked her dappled coursers for one single slow stage 
—and then jocund Morn leaping up on the box, took the 
ribbons in her rosy fingers, and, after a dram of dew, blew 
her bugle, and drove like blazes right on towards the gates 
of Day. 
His great work, says Professor Wilson, elsewhere, was indeed 
a perilous undertaking for a stranger in Britain, without the 
patronage of powerful friends, and with no very great means 
of his own—all of which he embarked in the enterprise dearest 
to his heart. Had it failed, Audubon would have been a 
ruined man—and that fear must have sometimes dismally 
disturbed him, for he is not alone in life, and is a man of 
strong family affections. But happily those nearest his 
breast are as enthusiastic in the love of natural science as 
himself—and were all willing to sink or swim with the be 
loved husband and venerated father. America may well be 
