56 THOMAS BEWICK. 



Sometimes he fought because he thought them impudent, at other times he 

 quarrelled because they sneered at his homely language. Besides disliking 

 the ways of the cockneys, he also found London itself extremely distasteful to 

 his essentially rustic mind. " It appeared to me," he said, " to be a world in 

 itself, where everything in the extreme might at once be seen : extreme 

 riches, extreme poverty, extreme grandeur, and extreme wretchedness ; all 

 of which were such as I had not contemplated before. Perhaps I might, 

 indeed, take too full a view of London on its gloomy side. I could not help 

 it. I tired of it and determined to return home. The country of my old 

 friends, the manners of the people of that day, the scenery of Tyneside — 

 seemed altogether to form a paradise for me, and I longed to see it 

 again." 



Kind friends expostulated with Bewick on what appeared to them the 

 unreasonable distaste he had taken to London and its people, but no per- 

 suasion could turn him from his purpose of going back to Northumberland. 

 "No temptation of gain," he replied, "of honour, or of anything else 

 however great, could ever have any weight with me; " and he said he would 

 rather join the army as a soldier, or herd sheep at five shillings a week as 

 long as he lived, than be compelled constantly to reside in the great modern 

 Babylon. 



Bewick would never have been able to achieve much if he had remained 

 in London — no vignettes with charming daylight effects of purely country 

 characteristics — everything would have to be filtered through a mind warped, 

 even though only slightly, by the majority of days spent beyond sight of 

 purely natural aspects. To be confined almost continually to walk in thronged 

 and noisy streets — for even then the streets of London had little country 

 feeling about them, and there were no railroads to whirl the tired worker to 

 distant villages — to see nothing save at intervals of the glories of the fields 

 he knew so well how to appreciate, to dispense greatly with his former 

 frequent walks in green lane and fertile meadow, was more than he could 



