Sir Roderick Murchison used to say that he always understood the geological peculiarities of a country he had only studied in Lear's sketches.

The compliment was thoroughly justified; and it is not every landscape-painter to whom it could honestly be paid.
The history of Lear's choice of a career was a curious one.

He was the youngest of twenty-one children, and, through a family mischance, was thrown entirely on the limited resources of an elderly sister at a very early age.

As a boy he had always dabbled in colors for his own amusement, and had been given to poring over the ordinary boys' books upon natural history.

It occurred to him to try to turn his infant talents to account; and he painted upon cardboard a couple of birds in the style which the older among us remember as having been called Oriental tinting, took them to a small shop, and sold them for fourpence.