But the great and, to the public in general, unexpected, charm of the History of Quadrupeds, was the number and variety of the vignettes and tailpieces, with which the whole volume is embellished. Many of these are connected with the manners and habits of the animals near which they are placed; others are, in some other way, connected with them, as being intended to convey to those who avail themselves of their labours, some salutary moral lesson, as to their humane treatment; or to expose, by perhaps the most cutting possible satire, the cruelty of those who ill-treat them. But a great proportion of them express, in a way of dry humour peculiar to himself, the artist's particular notions of men and things, the passing events of the day, etc. etc.; and exhibit often such ludicrous, and, in a few instances, such serious and even awful, combinations of ideas, as could not perhaps have been developed so forcibly in any other way.

From the moment of the publication of this volume, the fame of Thomas Bewick was established on a foundation not to be shaken. It has passed through seven large editions, with continually growing improvements.

It was observed before, that Mr Bewick's younger brother, John, was apprenticed to Mr Beilby and himself. He naturally followed the line of engrav-ing so successfully struck out by his brother. At the close of his apprenticeship, he removed to London, where he soon became very eminent as a wood-engraver; indeed, in some respects, he might be said to excel the elder Bewick. This naturally induced Mr William Bulmer, the spirited proprietor of the "Shakspeare Press," himself a Newcastle man, to conceive the desire of giving to the world a complete specimen of the improved arts of type and block-printing; and for this purpose he engaged the Messrs Bewicks, two of his earliest acquaintances, to engrave a set of cuts to embellish the poems of Goldsmith, The Traveller and Deserted Village, and Parnell's Hermit. These appeared in 1795, in a royal quarto volume, and attracted a great share of public attention, from the beauty of the printing and the novelty of the embellishments, which were executed with the greatest care and skill, after designs made from the most interesting passages of the poems, and were universally allowed to exceed every thing of the kind that had been produced before. Indeed, it was conceived almost impossible that such delicate effects could be obtained from blocks of wood; and it is said that his late Majesty (George III.) entertained so great a doubt upon the subject, that he ordered his bookseller, Mr G. Nicol, to procure the blocks from Mr Bulmer, that he might convince himself of the fact.

The success of this volume induced Mr Bulmer to print, in the same way, Somerville's Chase. The subjects which ornament this work being entirely composed of landscape scenery and animals, were peculiarly adapted to display the beauties of woodengraving. Unfortunately for the arts, it was the last work of the younger Bewick, who died at the close of 1795, of a pulmonary complaint, probably contracted by too great application. He is justly described in the monumental inscription in Oving-ham church-yard, as "only excelled as to his ingenuity as an artist by his conduct as a man." Previously, however, to his death, he had drawn the whole of the designs for the Chase on the blocks, except one; and the whole were beautifully engraved by his brother Thomas.

In 1797, Messrs Beilby and Bewick published the first volume of the "History of British Birds," comprising the land-birds. This work contains an account of the various feathered tribes, either constantly residing in, or occasionally visiting, our islands. While Bewick was engraving the cuts (almost all faithfully delineated from nature), Mr Beilby was engaged in furnishing the written descriptions. Some unlucky misunderstandings having arisen about the appropriation of this part of the work, a separation of interests took place between the parties, and the compilation and completion of the second volume, Water-birds," devolved on Mr Bewick alone -subject, however, to the literary corrections of the Rev. Henry Cotes, Vicar of Bedlington. In the whole of this work, the drawings are minutely accurate, and express the natural delicacy of feather, down, and accompanying foliage, in a manner particularly happy. And the variety of vignettes and tail-pieces, and the genius and humour displayed in the whole of them (illustrating, besides, in a manner never before attempted, the habits of the birds), stamps a value on the work superior to the former publication on Quadrupeds. * This also has passed through many editions, with and without the letterpress.

* "Of Bewick's powers, the most extraordinary is the perfect accuracy with which he seizes and transfers to paper the natural objects which it is his delight to draw. His landscapes are absolute fac-similes; his animals are whole-length portraits. Other books on natural history have fine engravings ; but still, neither beast nor bird in them have any character; dogs and deer, lark and sparrow, have all airs and countenances marvellously insipid, and of a most flat similitude. You may buy dear books, but if you want to know what a bird or quadruped it, to Bewick you must go at last. It needs only to glance at the works of Bewick, to convince ourselves with what wonderful felicity the very countenance and air of his animals are marked and distinguished. There is the grave owl, the silly wavering lapwing, the pert jay, the impudent over-fed sparrow, the airy lark, the sleepy-headed gourmand duck, the restless titmouse, the insignificant wren, the clean harmless gull, the keen rapacious kite - every one has his character."

"His vignettes are just as remarkable. Take his British Birds, and in the tail-pieces to these volumes you shall find the most touching representations of Nature in all her forms, animate and inanimate. There are the poachers tracking a hare in the snow; and the urchins who have accomplished the creation of a "snow-man;" the disappointed beggar leaving the gate open for the pigs and poultry to march over the good dame's linen, which she is laying out to dry; the thief who sees devils in every bush - a sketch that Hogarth himself might envy; the strayed infant standing at the horse's heels, and pulling his tail, while the mother is in an agony flying over the style; the sportsman who has slipped into the torrent; the blind man and boy, unconscious of "Keep on this side;" and that best of burlesques on military pomp, the four urchins astride of gravestones for horses, the first blowing a glass trumpet, and the others bedizened in tatters, with rush-caps and wooden swords.