XXVlll 
LIFE OF WILSON. 
translated, if we may so speak, into a new existence. He had 
long been a lover of the works of Nature, and had derived more 
happiness from the contemplation of her simple beauties, than 
from any other source of gratification. But he had hitherto been 
a mere novice ; he was now about to receive instructions from one, 
whom the experience of a long life, spent in travel and rural retire- 
ment, had rendered qualified to teach. Mr. Bartram soon percei- 
ved the bent of his friend’s mind, and its congeniality to his own; 
and took every pains to encourage him in a study, which, while it 
expands the faculties, and purifies the heart, insensibly leads to the 
contemplation of the glorious Author of nature himself. From his 
youth Wilson had been an observer of the manners of birds ; and 
since his arrival in America he had found them objects of uncom- 
mon interest; but he had not yet viewed them with the eye of a 
naturalist. 
Mr. Bartram possessed some works on natural history, parti- 
cularly those of Catesby and Edwai’ds. Wilson perused them 
attentively; and found himself enabled, even with his slender stock 
of information, to detect errors and absurdities into which these 
authors had fallen, from a defective mode of studying nature : a 
mode, which, while it led them to the repositories of dried skins 
and preparations, and to a reliance on hearsay evidence, subjected 
them to the imputation of ignorance, which their lives, devoted to 
the cultivation and promotion of science, certainly would not jus- 
tify. Wilson’s improvement was now rapid; and the judicious 
criticisms which he made on the above-mentioned authors, grati- 
fied his friend and instructor, who redoubled his encouraging assis- 
tance, in order to further him in a pursuit for which his genius, 
now beginning to develope itself, was evidently fitted. 
