A RULING PASSION, 4D

In process of time our enthusiast married, and
became a family man. He relates that for a long
period (of nearly twenty years) his life was a
succession of vicissitudes. He tried various branches
of commerce, but they all proved unprofitable—
doubtless, as he himself acknowledges, because his
mind was filled constantly with a passion for ram-
bling in search of those objects from which his
taste derived the highest gratification; and the
result was that he proceeded, in opposition to the
advice and remonstrances of his friends, to break
through all bonds, and give himself up wholly to
his favourite pursuit. Any one, he says, who had
then watched his course, would have pronounced
him callous to every sense of duty; and regardless
of the interests of his wife and children, he un-
dertook long and tedious journeys, ransacked the
woods, the lakes, the prairies, and the shores of the
Atlantic, and spent years away from his family; and
all this, as he distinctly states, simply to enjoy the
sight of nature, for at that time he had formed no
intention of communicating his observations to the
world.
An acquaintance accidentally formed with Prince
Lucien Bonaparte, the distinguished naturalist,
was the means of directing Mr Audubon’s thoughts
to the publication of his great work, and deter-
mined him, for that purpose, to carry his collection