he privations which were experienced in their prosecution;
but the "Ornithology" otherwise obtained a wide circulation, and,
excelling in point of illustration every production that had yet
appeared in America, gained for the author universal commendation. In
January 1810, his second volume appeared, and in a month after he
proceeded to Pittsburg, and from thence, in a small skiff, made a
solitary voyage down the Ohio, a distance of nearly six hundred miles.
During this lonely and venturous journey he experienced relaxation in
the composition of a poem, which afterwards appeared under the title of
"The Pilgrim." In 1813, after encountering numerous hardships and
perils, which an enthusiast only could have endured, he completed the
publication of the seventh volume of his great work. But the sedulous
attention requisite in the preparation of the plates of the eighth
volume, and the effect of a severe cold, caught in rashly throwing
himself into a river to swim in pursuit of a rare bird, brought on him a
fatal dysentery, which carried him off, on the 23d of August 1813, in
his forty-eighth year. He was interred in the cemetery of the Swedish
church, Southwark, Philadelphia, where a plain marble monument has been
erected to his memory. A ninth volume was added to the "Ornithology" by
Mr George Ord, an intimate friend of the deceased naturalist; and three
supplementary volumes have been published, in folio, by Charles Lucien
Bonaparte, uncle of the present Emperor of the French.

Amidst his extraordinary deserts as a naturalist, the merits of
Alexander Wilson as a poet have been somewhat overlooked. His poetry, it
may be remarked, though unambitious of ornament, is bold and vigorous in
style, and, when devoted to satire, is keen and vehement. The ballad of
"Watty and Meg," though exception may be taken to the moral, is an
admirable picture of human nature, and one of the most graphic
narratives of the "taming of a shrew" in the language. Allan Cunningham
writes: "It has been excelled by none in lively, graphic fidelity of
touch: whatever was present to his eye and manifest to his ear, he
could paint with a life and a humour which Burns seems alone to
excel."[41] In private life, Wilson was a model of benevolence and of
the social virtues; he was devoid of selfishness, active in beneficence,
and incapable of resentment. Before his departure for America, he waited
on every one whom he conceived he had offended by his juvenile