we are doubtless to ascribe the first application and practical demonstration of the new method, as well as the subsequent improvements by which he eventually gave to it probably all the perfection of which it is susceptible. indulgence he despised. His ordinary exercise was walking; but he was fond of all the manly and invigorating sports of the country, and desired no better relaxation from the toils of the workshop than an occasional participation in such cheap and simple amusements. The whole economy of his life was regu It would be out of place in a sketch like this to follow up what has been said by a cata-lated upon a principle of rigid logue of the various works which Bewick gave to the world, after the period in his history at which we are now arrived, or which made their appearance illustrated by his embellishments. We have traced the steps by which he rose, through the force of his own talents and industry, to the head of his profession; and it is not necessary that we should pursue his career further. Suffice it to say, that he amply sustained throughout the remainder of his long life the promise of his early progress. No man was ever more devoted to his profession. Its labours were as much his enjoyment as his business. He was always an early riser; and from the hour at which he got out of bed till evening, he was generally to be found at work, and whistling merrily all the while. For what are called the pleasures of society he cared very little; his social hours were passed in the midst of his family, or occasionally among a small number of select friends when the task of the day was done. Everything in the least degree savouring of effeminate temperance, as well as of the most steady and persevering exertion. He was remarkable at all times for the moderation with which he ate and drank; and in respect to other matters, he showed such a contempt for luxury that he generally slept, even in the depth of winter, with the windows of his chamber open, though in consequence he sometimes, on awaking, found the snow lying on his bedclothes. For money, which men in general prize so highly, Bewick had all the indifference of a philosopher. The number of works which his unwearied application produced was, as might be expected, extraordinarily great. But he did not confine his studies and performances merely to the art in which he has chiefly earned his fame. He made himself competently acquainted with various branches of knowledge, and with natural history in particular he was intimately conversant. He also engraved occasionally on copper as well as on wood. Even the greater leisure which he was obliged to allow himself during the few last years of his life, cut of an old horse, heading an address against cruelty to animals, was brought to him only two or three days before his death. This eminent artist and excellent man died on the 8th of November 1828, in the 76th year of his age.1 when the infirmities of old age compelled him partially to relinquish his professional labours, was not given up to mere idleness. He availed himself of this release from his ordinary occupations to write a memoir of his own life. But to the very last hour of his existence his art continued to occupy his thoughts. His last undertaking -directed, like most of those by which it had been preceded, mainly by an anxiety for the diffusion of sound knowledge and morality—was the prepara-zines will prove. The editor of this tion of a series of cuts for the labouring part of the population, which might supplant the tasteless and often corrupting prints usually found among the embellishments of the cottage; and a proof impression of the first of this intended collection, a That the engraver on wood has made considerable progress since Bewick's time, a glance at some of the beautifully illustrated volumes issued from time to time will plainly show. In no country has the art made more rapid strides than in America, as a glance at Scribner's and other maga magazine, in April 1880, while inti mating the determination of the pro drawings on wood by amateurs, at prietors to offer premiums for the best the same time mentioned the fact, that all the wood engravers in the country were crowded with work, and to take up for all those who had any that it was a most promising business talent in this direction.—ED. USEFULNESS OF SUCH ENCOURAGEMENTS AS THE EXAMPLES HERE GIVEN ARE CALCULATED TO AFFORD TO YOUTHFUL GENIUS IN EVERY DEPARTMENT OF STUDY. SELF-EDUCATED POETS: JOHN TAYLOR-ANTONIO BIANCHI-ALLAN RAMSAY-ROBERT BLOOMFIELD. THE individuals with whom our last three chapters have been occupied have not earned their distinction by the cultivation of any branch of what is properly called science or literature; but their lives do not on that account furnish us with less suitable illustrations of the subject of the present work. Our object is to inculcate the importance, to demonstrate the practicability, and to point out the method, of intellectual improvement generally; and especially to make the young reader understand and feel, by an array of examples taken from every condition of society and every walk of mental exertion, that in the pursuit of any description of knowledge no difficulties arising from external circumstances can eventually resist a steady determination to excel; so that a man's success or failure in such an attempt de pends, in fact, more upon himself than upon any circumstances in which he may be placed. Wherever, therefore, we have been able to find a case of extraordinary attainments made in despite of such obstacles as usually repress all endeavour after intellectual cultivation, we have not hesitated to bring it forward, whether it was that of an individual who had distinguished himself in philosophy, in scholarship, or in art. What we have wished to establish and make evident is the power which every man really desirous of education has, in the absence of all aid from others, to educate himself; and that this power is not confined to the case of any particular sort of acquirement, but exists in nearly an equal degree in regard to every species of knowledge or skill of which any one may be ambitious to possess himself. And one moment's consideration will show the vast importance of such a truth being generally diffused and felt in all its universality. How much apprehension and despondency would even those of the children of poverty and neglect, who have been eventually most successful in their efforts to educate themselves, have been saved had they all possessed such an assurance as these examples are calculated to afford, that many others had triumphed in the same or a harder struggle before them! Would not this of itself have helped to smooth the roughest of their difficulties, and carried them forward on their way with new strength, even when their hearts were most ready to fail them? Nay, how many might not such an assurance have led to high attainments, and perhaps to achievements beneficial both to themselves and to mankind, in some one of the various paths of intellectual enterprise, who, frightened by the apprehended arduousness of the task, have either never made an attempt to emancipate themselves from the ignorance in which they were reared, or, having begun the pursuit of knowledge, have stopt in their career ere they had made any considerable progress! Nor let it be said that the mere force of talent, where it really exists, will of itself be sufficient to overcome everything that may tend to repress it. Even genius of the highest order is often diffident, and easily dismayed; its quickness of sensibility makes it apprehensive, and prone both to exaggerate difficulties where they do exist, and to create them where they do not. On these accounts it frequently needs encouragement where a coarser nature, and faculties of immeasurably less real power, might safely be left to make their way without any pains being taken to invigorate or sustain their possessor's confidence of success. We cannot, then, doubt the usefulness of diversifying our illustrations as much as possible by selecting them from all the different departments of biography. would offer to every aspirant, in every line of intellectual pur suit, an example by which he may at least learn that he is setting out upon no impracticable or hitherto unaccomplished journey, but that a road as difficult as his own, if not the very same, has been travelled by another before him. Whether, therefore, it be literature or science, or any branch of art, in which it is his desire to accomplish himself, let him be as destitute at the commencement of his career of all the ordinary means of instruction as he may, here is his assurance that the way is still open to him, not only to mediocrity of attainment in his chosen pursuit, but even, it may be, to the highest distinction. We propose now to notice a few of the more remarkable instances, not already adverted to, in which a genius for another of the fine arts, Poetry,-which is, however, at the same time, a department of literature also,has burst through all the impediments of an unfavourable worldly lot, and prompted its possessor to the successful pursuit of that education which here, as everywhere else, can alone enable even the most extraordinary native powers of mind to produce anything of much value. For it is certainly a very unfounded, though by no means an uncommon notion, that the case of poetic talent forms an exception to this general rule, and that to be a great poet a man has only to be born such. There is no instance on record of an individual either securing or deserving any considerable or permanent distinction by his poetical productions, who had not stored his mind with much and various knowledge, in other words, who had not educated himself well, although never, it may be, matriculated in any university. The germ of a genius for poetry has no doubt sometimes made its appearance in individuals nearly altogether uneducated; but where is to be found the case of this description in which the seed, so buried in an uncultivated soil, has ever grown to anything worth the gathering? It is indeed very much to be apprehended that this mistaken notion in regard to the uselessness of education to a poet, which is sometimes carried so far as to amount to a belief that a poet is actually spoiled by being educated, has not unfrequently had the effect of preventing persons who felt, or supposed, themselves to be gifted with poetic powers, from exerting themselves with SO much ardour and perseverance as they otherwise might have done in the general cultivation of their faculties, or even, in some cases, from making any such attempt at all. Some poets of the humbler class, at any rate, might probably be mentioned who would have written better if they had taken more pains to add other acquirements to their talent for versifying. We had in this country, in the seventeenth century, a writer named JOHN TAYLOR, but who was generally called the Water Poet, from the occupation by which he won his livelihood, which was that of a waterman. Taylor, whose parents were poor people, had learned a very little Latin at a school in the city of Gloucester, where he was born; but this, which was in truth merely a few pages of the rudiments very imperfectly conned, he soon forgot, and he never attempted to recover it. Yet he showed considerable industry in tagging rhymes, both while engaged in the laborious employment we have mentioned, and at an after period, when he kept a victual |