bring to the representation of "these beautiful and interesting aërial wanderers of the British Isles " (as he styles them) a quality greater than either of these, that unlessoned insight which comes of loving them, the knowledge that often elevates an indifferent workman into an artist, and without which, as may be seen from the efforts of some of Bewick's followers, the most finished technical skill and most highly trained trick of observation produce nothing but an imago mortis. These birds of Bewick,-those especially that he had seen and studied in their sylvan haunts,-are alive. They swing on boughs, they light on wayside stones; they flit rapidly through the air; they seem almost to utter their continuous or intermittent cries; they are glossy with health and freedom; they are alert, bright-eyed, watchful of the unfamiliar spectator, and ready to dart off if he so much as stir a finger. And as Bewick saw them, so we see them, with their fitting background of leaf and bough, of rock or underwood,-backgrounds that are often studies in themselves. Behind the rook his brethren stalk the furrows, disdainful of

the scarecrow, while their black nests blot the trees beyond; the golden plover stands upon his marshy heath; the robin and the fieldfare have each his appropriate snow-clad landscape; the little petrel skims swiftly in the hollow of a wave. Not unfrequently the objects in the distance have a special biographical interest. To the left of the

magpie is one of those worn-out old horses, with whose sufferings Bewick had so keen a sympathy. It has apparently broken its neck by falling over a little cliff, part of the rails of which it has carried with it in its descent. At the back of the guineahen is the artist himself, seated on a wall; in the cut of the blackbird is a view of Cherryburn. Details of this kind lead us insensibly to another feature of Bewick's books on Natural History, of which we have not yet spoken,-the numerous vignettes or tailpieces at the ends of the chapters. These, says his contemporary Dovaston, were "always his favourite exercise." "The bird or figure he did as a task; but was relieved by working the scenery and background; and after each figure he flew to the tailpiece with avidity,

for in the inventive faculty his imagination revelled." Some extravagance of phrase abated, this statement may be accepted as showing in which direction Bewick's artistic inclinations were strongest; and the wide popularity of these little pictures is another confirmation of Mr. Matthew Arnold's dictum about "pleasure in creating." But they deserve a chapter to themselves.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE TAILPIECES.

MUCH in these famous tailpieces is of that enduring and universal character which belongs to no time or place. But the pilgrim from Newcastle to Prudhoe (the nearest point to Ovingham) is often reminded on the road that he is in Bewick's country. Passing out of the Central Railway Station, with the river Tyne to his left, he sees the "coal-staiths" and fleets of "keels," and the closed furnace-doors with the smoke curling from their crevices, as Bewick saw and drew them. Farther on, at Wylam, they are rook-shooting, and there are sea-gulls wheeling above the sandy reaches. While he is punted across the river from Prudhoe1 he himself seems to be taking

1 Now, of course, he crosses the bridge. The above was written in 1881.

part in a tailpiece, and the spare

boat-stower

stuck in the stones of the little pier, and the long loops of net which are drying in the sun, help to strengthen this belief. As he climbs the steep stairway on the opposite bank and notes the tidedragged look of the branches near the water, he is reminded of the frequent floods, and especially of that great flood of November flood of November 1771, which not only tore down the arches of the old bridge at Newcastle, but swept away the humbler boathouse at Ovingham. In the parsonage gate he recognises an old friend of the "Select Fables," and he looks curiously at the picturesque churchporch where the farmer's son from Cherryburn once made his "chalky designs." Crossing the fields again toward Eltringham Ferry a hundred aspects of hedge and river-side seem friendly and familiar. The same ploughman is following the same team as in the vignette of "Justissima Tellus"; the same sheep are huddling in the fold, watched by the same vigilant collie; and when he has traversed the Tyne again, and finds himself among the quaint north-country stiles and