MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 
39 
that he immediately confessed his guilt, and on his 
knees implored his pardon. This small sketch was 
afterwards adopted as a tail-piece, which may be 
seen in the first volume of the British Birds, p. 1 1 0.* 
(First Edition.) 
Mr Bewick was a man of warm attachments, par- 
ticularly to the younger branches of his family. It 
is known that, during his apprenticeship, he seldom 
failed to visit his parents once a week at Cherry-Burn, 
distant about fourteen miles from Newcastle ; and 
when the Tyne was so swelled with rain and land 
floods, that he could not get across, it was his prac- 
tice to shout over to them, and, having made inqui- 
ries after the state of their health, to return home. 
In 1825, in a letter to an old crony in London, 
after describing with a kind of enthusiastic pleasure 
the domestic comforts which he daily enjoyed, he 
says, “ I might fill you a sheet in dwelling on the 
merits of my young folks, without being a bit afraid 
of any remarks that might be made upon me, such 
* In page 82 of the same volume is the representation of 
a cart-horse running away with some affrighted boys, who 
had got into the cart while the careless driver was drinking 
in a hedge-alehouse. It is observable, that the rapidity of 
the cart is finely expressed by the almost total disappear- 
ance of the spokes of the wheel; a circumstance, it is be- 
lieved, never before noticed by an artist. 
