How soft the strain which love paternal breathes!
More musical, than ever raptured bards

Of Orpheus fancied,-know not, save what hour
The mingled melody of thousand birds,
Warbling, first broke on Eve's delighted ear!-
Oh! I could sketch with mem'ry's fairest tints
Each fond remembrance of paternal love,
But I should idly sketch.-For who would bear
With me, save those, the few, to me most dear,
Who know, who feel that truth my pencil guides?---
Death aimed his arrow well, and more than one
That arrow pierced.-He loves to disunite
The firmest link from fond affection's chain!
He did it then, and now the scattered parts
Torn from their prop, can only sigh to clasp it!
Who now shall bring the cement? Who shall pour
In mercy, balsam on the bleeding wound?
He-God!-who, with an eye that never sleeps,
Watches the wearied farm-boy, midst his flock
Browsing, asleep, what time the ven'mous snake
Glides by, and harms him not-the charmer, charmed!
He, who unheeded leads the truant child
Home, to relieve a mother's tortured heart,
And takes the mourner "where the wicked cease
From troubling, and the weary are at rest.”
Nor must I pass thee by, my parted friend!
At this still hour, to mild seclusion dedicate,
It were not wrong to think thy virtues o'er!
Thou too art numbered with the favoured few

Whom friendship mourns! I could not choose but love thee,
And I have loved thee well!-Among the tears

That warmly mingle on thy early tomb,

Mine will be found!-And at that awful hour
When life's pale taper shoots its last dim gleam,
When the last figure in the shifting scene
Of life flits by, may then the chosen few,

Whom I have loved, and who have cheered my path
In silence seek my grave with sighs as pure

As those, which we who love thee, heave for thee!

The Port Folio.

BY OLIVER OLDSCHOOL, ESQ.

VARIOUS; that the mind

Of desultory man, studious of change,

And pleased with novelty, may be indulged.-COWPER.

For the Port Folio.

Supplement to the American Ornithology of Alexander Wilson, containing a sketch of the author's life, with a selection from his letters; some remarks; and a history of those birds which were intended to compose part of his ninth vol ume. Illustrated with plates, engraved from Wilson's original drawings. By George Ord, F. L. S. Member of the Am. Phil. Soc. and of the Acad. Nat. Sciences of Philadelphia; and correspondent of the Philomathic Society of Paris. Philadelphia. 1825. Quarto. pp. 298.

In the narrow compass of American biography, the life of Wilson, by his friend, Mr. Ord, shines with peculiar lustre. We know of no work in that class of our literature that will bear any comparison with it, if we regard the power which it possesses to excite and rivet the attention. Wilson was an extraordinary man. From nature he derived a vigorous capacity, and an ardent thirst for enterprise. Although he had not the advantage of a liberal education, his ambition and his industry were such, that he made large acquisitions in the territories of knowledge, and has established his name as the American Ornithologist, on an enduring basis. His great work, while it sparkles with the rapid conceptions and brilliant flights of genius, exhibits, at the same time, the patient observation and painful accuracy of Science. So lively and so accurate are his delineations of the feathered race, that one might imagine they had been furnished with the fabled window, to enable this indefatigable inquirer to investigate and portray their peculiarities and propensities.

Our business, however, at present, is not with the work, but the life of the author.

From Mr. Ord's narrative we learn, that Wilson was born of obscure parentage, in the town of Paisley, Scotland, in July, 1766. His father was a distiller; and the son was taught AUGUST, 1827.-No. 292.

12

the useful art of weaving. His education was extremely limited and defective, as he was removed from school at the age of thirteen. Even at this early period he was smitten with the love of study; we, at least, are bound to record with approbation, his acknowledgment that a parcel of old magazines, to which he had the good fortune to have access, were "the first books that gave him a fondness for reading and reflection." Song attracted his first regard, and he aspired to describe the venerable mountains and wizard streams of his native land. Burns was then the reigning favourite, and it was the fashion to look for genius in the humble walks of life. The old delusion," the approbation of friends," that will-o'the-wisp which has led many astray, induced him to offer a volume of poems for public subscription. He received no encouragement of this description, but not deterred by so significant a hint, he published, at the age of twenty-two, his "Poems, Humorous, Satirical, and Serious." He had sufficient good sense, in after life, to regret this publication and rejoice in its untimely fate. We, therefore, will seek no further its merits to disclose,-particularly as it has never fallen into our hands. This remark will apply also to his prose essays, but we are disposed to entertain a favourable opinion of them from the circumstance of their finding a place in so respectable a collection as "The Bee," a periodical work published at Edinburg, at that period, under the direction of Dr. Anderson. Wilson became acquainted with Burns, and they separated with an agreement to continue their intercourse under the form of a correspondence. This friendly relation was broken almost as soon as it was commenced, by an event which is both ludicrous and characteristic. writing to the Ayrshire ploughman, about his Tam O'Shanter, just then published, Wilson remarked, of the passage beginning,

"Now Tam, O Tam! had thae been queans!" that there was "too much of the brute" in it.

In

To this Burns replied-"If ever you write again to so irritable a creature as a poet, I beg you will use a gentler epithet than to say there is too much of the brute in any thing he says or does." This terminated their correspondence.

The French revolution, about this time, extended its baleful influence to Scotland, and began to corrupt the honest principles, as it affected the industry, of the manufacturers of Paisley. The ardent mind of Wilson rendered him particularly susceptible of the contagion of these deleterious princi

ples; and he vented his spleen against his fancied wrongs in a libel on a manufacturer, who, from a low origin, had attained wealth and influence which he sullied by avarice and knavery. His wit was caustic and well relished; but the author was not only condemned to a temporary imprisonment, but afterwards underwent the mortification of being compelled to burn his production, with his own hands, at the public cross in his native town.

This, and other circumstances, conspiring to disgust him with his own country, he came to the United States, in July, 1794, in search of equality of rights and political justice. He was destitute of money, but he was blessed with attractive manners and good health; and he was, moreover, fertile in resources and untiring in industry.

After working a short time as a copper-plate printer, he resumed his original trade of a weaver, in the employ of Joshua Sullivan, about ten miles from Philadelphia. He soon quitted this situation and went to Virginia; from which he shortly returned, and made an expedition through New Jersey as a pedler. His next occupation was that of a schoolmaster in the vicinity of Frankford. But we need not follow him through his various and painful struggles. After many vicissitudes, his good fortune led him to the township of Kingsessing, near Gray's Ferry, in the neighbourhood of the celebrated naturalist, William Bartram. A warm friendship was soon matured between them, which was only terminated by the decease of one of the parties. Wilson had always been a lover of nature, and Bartram soon perceived and cultivated a disposition so congenial with his own. In the library of the latter, Wilson found the works of Catesby and Edwards, and it is not unlikely that to these volumes we are indebted for "the American Ornithology." It is not a little curious to find him, as late as the year 1804, writing to this friend and teacher, from whom he was about to receive some portraits of birds to be copied:-" be pleased to mark on the drawings, the names of each bird, as, except three or four, I do not know them." Four years after this frank confession, he produced a work in which he detected and exposed numerous errors by some of the best naturalists of Europe; a work, moreover, which vies with their most finished productions in the same branch of science.

About this time he wrote occasionally in the Literary Magazine, and the Port Folio; but his contributions are rather cold, formal, and insipid; which is somewhat remarkable, for all his private letters are written with feeling and animation;

and are full of observation. What can be more soothing and tender than the following unstudied reflections in a letter to his friend Bartram:

Sorry I am, indeed, that afflictions so severe as those you mention, should fall where so much worth and sensibility reside, while the profligate, the unthinking, and unfeeling, so frequently pass through life, strangers to sickness, adversity, or suffering. But God visits those with distress whose enjoyments he wishes to render more exquisite The storms of affliction do not last forever; and sweet is the serene air, and warm sunshine, after a day of darkness and tempest. Our friend has, indeed, passed away in the bloom of youth and expectation; but nothing has happened but what almost every day's experience teaches us to expect. How many millions of beautiful flowers have flourished and faded under your eye; and how often has the whole profusion of blossoms, the hopes of a whole year, been blasted by an untimely frost. He has gone only a little before us; we must soon follow; but while the feelings of nature cannot be repressed, it is our duty to bow with humble resignation to the decisions of the great Father of all, rather receiving with gratitude the blessings he is pleased to bestow, than repining at the loss of those he thinks proper to take from us." P. xlii.

It was a happy thought to endeavour to entice the botanist from the chamber of mourning by arraying before him the lillies of the valley, which open their glories to the morning dew and perish with the setting sun.

In July, 1805, he writes to Mr. Bartram-" I dare say you will smile at my presumption when I tell you I have seriously begun to make a collection of drawings of the birds to be found in Pennsylvania." Upon an attentive examination of Edward's etchings, he conceived the design of learning that art, in which he was aided by his friend Lawson, the engraver. Mr. Ord describes his essays as creditable to Wilson's perseverance and ingenuity, but by no means satisfactory.

About the time that he resolved to write his history of the American birds, Mr. Jefferson had planned an expedition, of a scientific description, up the Red River, the Arkansas, and other tributary streams of the Mississippi. Wilson communicated his undertaking to the President, and solicited an appointment in the enterprise, as an Ornithologist. His application was supported by his friend Mr. Bartram, who described him as highly qualified for the employment which he sought. When it is recollected with what facility letters could be obtained from Mr. Jefferson, by people of every rank and condition, and on every subject, it will excite not a little surprise that so respectable an application never received any notice. Bartram had been for many years on terms of familiar correspondence with Mr. Jefferson, who was