THOMAS BEWICK. 



5 



his artistic sense has hidden the cottage itself as much as possible from 

 sight. Ardent hero- worshippers may wish to view the very room where 

 the great engraver and moralist was born, but the environs will be the 

 attraction for most people — the scenes from which Bewick drew many of 

 his inspirations, the Northumbrian hillsides where, as Mr. Ruskin says, he 

 " grew into as stately a life as their strongest pine." 



Around, far and near, the country is one noble picture of beautiful river 

 scenery diversified with rocks and foliage, vividly recalling the vignettes 

 in the Birds and Quadrupeds. Here a corner of river border-land, with 

 trees above and rocks below; there a distant view of a cultivated hill- 

 side with farmhouse nestling among the trees. One time a tail-piece is 

 recalled by a ferry-boat waiting for passengers ; at another by a glimpse of 

 the ruins of Prudhoe or of the Norman tower of Ovingham Church. The 

 entire country, to one acquainted with Bewick's cuts, is filled with a series 

 of delights and surprises. A journey there, even in the present day, unfolds 

 the wonderful fidelity of every landscape Bewick drew, and fills the visitor 

 with admiration and enthusiasm for the delineator of the grand simplicity 

 and truth of nature.* 



Bewick's father, though not rich, was not by any means one of the poorer 

 sort. In the pit which he rented he employed a number of miners, and his 

 profits from the colliery must have been enough to make him a person of 

 some consequence. f Charnley, in his slight memoir, mentions that he "was 

 considered a great wit in his part of the country; and being possessed of 

 a vast fund of anecdote, was in the habit of entertaining customers with his 



* The family who reside at Cherryburn at the present time are descendants of Thomas Bewick's youngest 

 brother, William. The house has been built since the engraver's youth, and is a large structure much more suited to 

 modem requirements than the little cottage of Bewick's birth. 



t A Land-sale Colliery is a colliery where the coals are sold only by land-sale, i.e. they are sold at the pit's 

 mouth and carted away, or else sent overland by rail in trucks. In speaking of a land-sale colliery it is meant the 

 coals wrought from that colliery are not shipped. In most offices separate books are kept for " Land-sale Coals " and 

 " Shipment Coals." 



