Pass on to Bewick's vein of satire. Look
at the old fellow, at the head of the preface,
volume two, who is saying an elaborate grace
over his bowl of scraps. Such is his fervour,
that his uplifted hands and shut eyes are
withdrawn from things terrestrial, to the extent that
a lean cat is quietly absorbing the spolia opima
during the lengthy oration. Is not this a capital
sermon to the "unco' good," whose religion never
permits them to attend to the true matter in
hand, whose house is going to rack and ruin,
while they are sending out missions to Borio-
boola-gah? Besides, the old fellow is a
hypocrite even to himself. You see that stamped in
every line of his face. At the end of the same
preface is a kindred hint to the silly whose faith
is reasonless. One old blind man carries on his
back another old blind man, and is himself
conducted by a dog, which has led them both into
a quagmire.

How well the next vignette carries on toe
artist's train of thought! An old man upon a
panniered old horse, stops bewildered in a pelting
storm, just where two roads divide. The
guide-post, pointing two different ways, is half
blown down, and its lettering has been long
illegible. The horse stands stock-still upon
his huge feet: the old man raises his stick,
but doubts whether he shall strike— for whither
is his horse to go? The expression of wind,
rain, cloud, and dimness in the landscape, is
worthy of David Cox.

One sad satiric touch recurs from time to
time in Bewick; the various exhibition of a
memorial stone, half-sunk and half-defaced. At
page eighty-seven, in the first volume, a donkey
is manifesting much contempt for a square
pillar, on which you only make out the words,
"Battle . . . Splendid Victory . . . Immortal."
At page two hundred and two, same volume, we
find an old man leaning on his stick to contem-
plate a gravestone, on which (this time plainly)
is engraved:

                         Vanitas
                         Vanitatum
                         Omnia
                         Vanitas.

A roofless church is behind. A boy joyously
drives a hoop on the right hand of the picture.
In volume two, page two hundred and forty-five,
a church on a rock, a dilapidated churchyard,
form the foreground to a desolate tossing,
cloud-backed ocean. You see that the ocean
gains upon the land. Immediately before you
is a broken headstone, on one portion of which is

                         This stone
                         was erected
                         to perpetuate
                         the memory
                         of——

On the other:

                         Custos Rotul
                         of the county
                         of

A seagull is perched upon the first fragment.

Other satiric touches has Bewick. We never
look at the lean sheep caught in the brambles,
utterly denuded of the front part of his fleece,
and— as you see—about to lose the hinder
portion also, struggling, and accomplishing his
destiny by struggling, without thinking of a
wretch in Chancery. A lawyer-like raven is
appropriately waiting the poor beast's end.

Gluttony and carelessness are favourite
subjects of satire with Bewick. The first, rather
too coarsely flagellated for the taste of our age:
the latter admirably shown up in many vignettes.
Bear witness the thriftless washerwoman, who
on tiptoe is hanging some of her linen on a
line, while she omits to observe that her fowls
are playing strange havoc with the shirts and
towels spread on the ground behind her back.
Bear witness, again, the spirited representation
of the man with his water-cart, who, while
gossiping with a crony who is pointing to some
distant object, lets the water that should gladden
the lonely cottage on the moor, run out of the
unspigoted barrel behind him. Then how plainly
the dog, which has upset the pot-au-feu over his
scalded legs, is howling out in agony, " Meddle
not with what concerns you not."

There is another class of woodcuts in
Bewick's Birds which deals with the supernatural.
How those diabolical fancies used to
thrill us children! In a moon-piece, a man,
whose attitude always recals to us a scene
in Milman's Fazio, is lifting on his shoulders
a heavy sack— with nothing lawful in it, to be
sure, for the devil is helping to hoist up the
burden with a pole. In another vignette, the
devil is driving a man (is it the same man?)
in a cart, so as to bring him nearly under
a gallows, with a noose for his neck ready hanging.
The horse scents danger, and holds back
with stiffened legs. In a third devil scene, the
fiend, perched and half reclining on a high rock,
lorgnette in hand, is spying at a wonderfully
indicated crowd assembled round a gallows in
the distance, from which hangs the body of a
man (is it always the same man?), evidently just
hoisted up. Though not supernatural, another
vignette had a mysterious interest for us in the
old childish days. By a half-clouded moon,
which casts strong shadows, a man is journeying
on with a coffin-shaped coffer on his back—
a coffer thus lettered:

                               A
                         Wonderful
                              Fish.

In all these representations Bewick displays a
rare and marvellous power of expressing, by a
few strokes, action, motion, character, scenery.

Other illustrated works Bewick has given
to the world. His Animals, and his Fables
of AEsop, are well known, and no collector
of Bewick's books would like to be without
them. But The Birds are his opus
magnum. That he himself knew this, and
consciously assembled all his best thoughts, and
forms of delineation, in the one work, which he
meant to be his passport to posterity, who can
doubt? So we felt in looking over a lately