akes. He is profuse
in his originality, and yet boldly, at times, absorbs the labor of
others; yet he so entirely renovates, inspires, and makes their industry
his own, that his indebtedness is unthought of by the world.

The secret of Audubon's success will be found in his close pursuit of
nature; of her mysteries he has been of the truest, and therefore one of
her most favored priests. No labor by him was ever withheld, no toil
evaded. Turning over the pages of his works, you can trace him to the
tropics, where he worships and wonders; anon, he gives the witnessed
history of the solitary feathered life that inhabits those inhospitable
regions where the marble blue of the eternal snow scarcely ever reflects
a ray of sunshine. While you read with delight of the canvass-back duck
that fell beneath his rifle in the placid waters of the Chesapeake, he
is suddenly, upon another page, struggling with the gigantic albatros in
the surge-lashed waters of the Californias. You read on, and become lost
in the green field and gentle sloping hill; you wander beside the gently
running rivulet and inland lake, and rest in the shade of honeysuckle
bowers. Changing still, you are ushered into the miasmatic swamps and
dark fens in which only live the blear-eyed heron and repulsive bittern;
and then, lifted on the wings of imagination, you climb the embattled
rocks and precipices of the Cordilleras, dividing admiration of the
rising sun with the eccentric flights of the mighty vulture as he wheels
downward in his greetings of the god of day. Such is Audubon, who will
ever be remembered as long as mind answers in admiration and sympathy
with mind. He has stamped his memory in a work, and associated his name
with a family that will endure in freshness when the mightiest monuments
now existing will, like the pyramids, become unmeaning heaps; for his
name and immortality will ever be recalled by the fanning pinions of
every feathered inhabitant of the air.

The minute history of Audubon's remarkable work, from its conception to
its completion, would involve the recital of some of the most exalted
and interesting traits of character ever recorded. Audubon has slightly
touched upon one or two incidents of discouragement that would, of
themselves, have been sufficient to dishearten a less energetic being;
but the years of toil and sacrifice he endured, and the ten thousand
obstacles he overcame besides those he alluded to, will never be known.