* This is a mistake; Bewick must have meant that the lines representative of the figure were painted or hatched with any bituminous substance, and the interstices eat down by acids.

"At his table we had the pleasure of dining with several gentlemen of distinguished literary character, whom he had most politely invited on our account. After dinner, having largely enjoyed the full flow of his friends' conversation, and launched on its tide many a full and sunny sail of his own, our good host for a moment fell asleep in his elbow-chair; during which interval a gentleman narrated the following little anecdote, which, I find, my venerable friend's modesty has omitted in his own Memoir. The Duke of Northumberland, when first he called to see Mr. Bewick's workshops, was not personally known to my friend; yet he showed him his birds, blocks, and drawings, as he did to all, with the greatest liberality and cheerfulness; but, on discovering the high rank of his visitor, exclaimed, 'I beg pardon, my Lord, I did not know your Grace, and was unaware I had the honour of talking to so great a man.' To which the duke good-humour-edly replied, 'You are a much greater man than I am, Mr. Bewick/ To which my friend, with his ready wit that never failed or offended, resumed, No, my Lord; but were I Duke of Northumberland perhaps I could be.'

"A life of Bewick, without a word on his numberless and enrapturing vignettes, would be the story of Aladdin without his lamp. He is the very Autolycus of tail-pieces, which he flings out faster and more profusely, in ribands of all ramifications, than a fire-eater at a fair; ay, 'he utters them as if he had eaten ballads, and all mens ears grew to his tunes.' Do, reader, whatever be thy temperament, open any one of his books, and thou wilt touch a key accordant. Look at the boy-soldiers riding on gravestones, with rush-caps and swords of seg: the two hindermost blackguard ragamuffins, tattered and bare-legged; the next a great awkward booby, son of some scoundrel attorney; and the captain, smallest of all, well clothed, and in good shoes and stockings, - he is the squire's son, whose hall is seen behind; a pretty emblem of incipient aristocracy. Twenty years hence that little fellow will blow his twopenny trumpet among the Tories, and cry 'the church in danger;' the next rascal will bamboozle him out of his money, and the two villains behind poach in his covers. If thou lovest a good ghost story, as I do marvellously, look at the terrified thief, mistaking the stumps and grey ran-pikes, in the gloomy moonshine, for devils and horned goblins, with white wicker ribs and lanky skeleton arms. Wouldst thou know the cause of his terror? look into the back-ground: he has just passed a gallows. I have heard a great painter say that Hogarth might feel proud of this piece. - Ha! that is the murine phaeton, drawn by four cocked-tailed mice: Sir Whisker and Lady Mousellina with her parasol, of Mouse-COTTAGE; their mouse footman, and the mouse arms are emblazoned with mouse supporters on the panel, in all the boast of mouse heraldry: they are going to make a call on Lord Frittertime and Madam Twaddle. - See how that heartless and coarse minded tanner grins a brutal laugh at the poor dog to whose tail the naughty boys have tied a tinned kettle: you may hear that it has just had a bouncing bang. - Those five methodists, listening to the call of their master, scarce occupy two inches; yet look at their faces, male and female - special grace and election!!! - and were it not for the horns and claws of the preacher, by his clerical attitude you might take him for a very parson. - Cast your eye on the gipsies and their bear; are not thief and harlot marked in their physiognomies? That first fellow's coat is too big for him, a world too wide; he has stolen it. - Look with luxury on the light and buoyant cutter, dancing on the dashing waves, in pursuit of the heavy smuggler, straining and creaking in the breeze, laboriously making off in the misty moonlight. - The lame man has left his crutch behind, having mounted the back of the blind, who has let go his dog: hasty attachments imagine friendship eternal. - That poor spaniel bitch has been howling all night, and has just broken her string, and found her drowned puppies : look at her sudden pause and sorrow! - Ay, friend Bewick, many a lobster handles a pencil, and piddles on a set palette. - Do stop your ears at opening to the two fiddlers, with their jangling discordant scrapings.- I truly pity their hearts who hear not the howling of that scalded dog who has overturned the pot; and the cackling of that hen who has just been laying. - Oh! what a feast of diverting and instructive amusement for an idle summer's day, or a long winters night! What a rich and exhaustless suc-cession of grotesque figures, funny groups, comical scenes, pithy inscriptions, delicious landscapes, village farmsteads, rocky caverns, tufts of fern, river glens and cascades, quiet pools and sedgy knolls, lovely trees and woody dells, towns and towers, ivied ruins, sea-side views, with sermons in every stone; dreary snows, stormy waves, rolling ships, and screaming sea-fowl; quiet fountains, forest glades, and woodland solitudes; fairy haunts,

---------'Right seldom seen,

Lovely, lonesome, cool, and green.'

"The commonest capacity might read a history in every one of these rich and romantic tale-pieces. and a mind of wit and fancy may open to each, and feel arise from it the simultaneous power of delivering a bright or blooming narrative of melancholy or mirth. Thus the copious, capacious, and bountiful mind of Bewick, not merely content to fling around each bird and figure the most beautiful and appropriate scenery, but revelling in exuberance of imagination, drops, on almost every leaf, some gem of genius, 'to point a moral or adorn a tale.' These fling on our sunny memories gleams and glances of nature, that impulsively shed on the feelings a delicate mental and bosom emotion, indicating the presence and influence (and probably constituting much) of that fine but indefinable power called genius; whence emanating on congenial dispositions, like rich tones on accordant vibrations, awaken, in successive combination, all the melodious harmonies of the heart.