arest his breast are as
enthusiastic in the love of natural science as himself--and
were all willing to sink or swim with the beloved husband and
venerated father. America may well be proud of him--and he
gratefully records the kindness he has experienced from so many
of her most distinguished sons. In his own fame he is just and
generous to all who excel in the same studies; not a particle
of jealousy is in his composition; a sin, that, alas! seems too
easily to beset too many of the most gifted spirits in
literature and in science; nor is the happiest
genius--imaginative or intellectual--such is the frailty of
poor human nature at the best--safe from the access of that
dishonouring passion."

The second volume of The Birds of America was finished in 1834, and in
December of that year he published in Edinburgh the second volume of the
Ornithological Biography. Soon after, while he was in London, a nobleman
called upon him, with his family, and on examining some of his original
drawings, and being told that it would still require eight years to
complete the work, subscribed for it, saying, "I may not see it
finished, but my children will." The words made a deep impression on
Audubon. "The solemnity of his manner I could not forget for several
days," he writes in the introduction to his third volume; "I often
thought that neither might I see the work completed, but at length
exclaimed, 'My sons may;' and now that another volume, both of my
illustrations and of my biographies, is finished, my trust in Providence
is augmented, and I cannot but hope that myself and my family together
may be permitted to see the completion of my labors." When this was
written, ten years had elapsed since the publication of his first plate.
In the next three years, among other excursions he made one to the
western coast of the Floridas and to Texas, in a vessel placed at his
disposal by our government; and at the end of this time appeared the
fourth and concluding volume of his engravings, and the fifth of his
descriptions. The whole comprised four hundred and thirty-five plates,
containing one thousand and sixty-five figures, from the Bird of
Washington to the Humming Bird, of the size of life, and a great variety
of land and marine views, and coral and other productions, of different
climates and seasons, all carefully drawn and colored after nature. Well
might the great naturalis