AUDUBON IN LONDON 395 
tures which Sir Thomas sold for me enabled me to pay my 
borrowed money, and to appear full-handed when Mr. Havell 
called. Thus I passed the Rubicon. 
This was before the reform of the penal laws in Eng- 
land, when it seems to have been hard for a man to 
escape hanging, not to speak of being sent to prison 
for debt, the chief terror of life in certain circles. 
There were 228 capital offenses, and in 1829 in the 
city of London alone 7,114 persons were sent to the 
debtors’ prison.® 
Without the sale of his pictures in the summer of 
1827, Audubon felt that he must certainly have become 
a bankrupt, yet he was periodically displeased with the 
results of his efforts in oil colors, and resolved to “‘spoil 
no more canvas” but to draw “in my usual old untaught 
way, which is what God meant me to do”; “I can draw,” 
he continues, “but I shall never paint well.’ In the 
fall of 1828, however, he was again working in oils, 
and produced four large pieces, one of which was called 
“The Eagle and the Lamb,” and two others which were 
doubtless variations of his “Pheasant” and “Otter” pic- 
tures. “It is charity,” said the artist, “to speak the 
truth to a man who knows the poverty of his talents, 
and wishes to improve; it is villainous to mislead him, 
by praising him to his face, and laughing at his work 
as they go down the stairs of his house.” Sir Thomas 
Lawrence had praised some of these pictures and had 
promised to select one for exhibition at Somerset House. 
As regards “The Eagle and the Lamb,” which Audu- 
bon hoped would go to Windsor Castle, William 
Swainson would give no opinion; the same canvas, or 
® See Sir Walter Besant, London in the Nineteenth Century (London, 
1909). 
