It was not, however, a parlour, or an ordinary reception room that I entered, but evidently a room for work. In one corner stood a painter's easel, with a half-finished sketch of a beaver on the paper ; on the other lay the skin of an American panther. The antlers of elks hung upon the walls, stuffed birds of every description of gay plumage ornamented the mantelpiece, and exquisite drawings of field-mice, orioles, and woodpeckers, were scattered promiscuously in other parts of the room, across one end

384 THE HUDSON.

of wliich a long rude table was stretched, to hold artist's materials, scraps of drawing-paper, and immense folio volumes, filled with delicious paintings of birds taken in their native haunts.

" ' This,' said I to myself, ' is the studio of the naturalist,' but hardly had the thought escaped me when the master himself made his appearance. He was a tall, thin man, with a high, arched, and serene forehead, and a bright, penetrating, grey eye ; his white locks fell in clusters upon his shoulders, but they were the only signs of age, for his form was erect, and his step as light as that of a deer. The expression of his face was sharp, but noble and commanding, and there was something in it, partly derived from the aquiline nose, and partly from the shutting of the mouth, which made you think of the imperial eagle.

"His greeting, as he entered, was at once frank and cordial, and showed you the sincere, true man. ' How kind it is,' he said, with a slight French accent, and in a pensive tone, ' to come to see me, and how wise, too, to leave that crazy city ! ' He then shook me warmly by the hand. < Do you know,' he continued, * how I wonder that men can consent to swelter and fret their lives away amid those hot bricks and pestilent vapours, when the woods and fields are all so near ?