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 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

bickering burns, with the water-wagtail busy among the stones, and the farm-pigeon dropping down to drink, the illusion is well-nigh perfect. If, in addition to these, he comes suddenly upon a detachment of geese with their cackling leader at their head, marching solemnly waterward in Indian file, or is startled by an old horse tearing hungrily at the green leaves of a young tree, he has no longer any doubt, and believes every line and stroke that Bewick ever put to paper.

The rural life, and the scenes among which Bewick was brought up, naturally play a large part in this attractive collection. At the beginning of the "Land Birds" is that well-known picture of a "Farmyard," the drawing for which was exhibited in the Bond Street collection, and is an ext.aordinarily minute study of the subject. A woman winnows grain in front; a man carries a sack to the barn. Cocks and hens, ducks, turkeys, and geese, and even those uninvited guests, the starlings and sparrows, are clearly distinguishable in the foreground. A sow enters the yard with her litter; a dog dozes on

the dunghill. Nailed against the byre-wall are a magpie, a crow, and a heron; over these is a swallow's nest, or sparrow-bottle. Pigeons fly

above the ricks against the dark background of the trees, and there is a flight of fieldfares in the air. The same microscopic truthfulness is exhibited in a dozen other designs. Now it is a bent old fellow breaking stones by the roadside,