JOHN JAMES AUDUBON, the Ornithologist, died at his residence a few miles from New York, on the 27th of January. He was born in Louisiana, about 1775, of French parentage, traces of which were apparent through life in the foreign intonation with which he spoke the English language, although he wrote it with great vigor and correctness. He early manifested that enthusiastic love of nature, which subsequently became his ruling passion, and the mainspring of all his endeavors through life. In the preface to his "Ornithological Biography," he gives a vivid sketch of the growth of his fondness for the winged creation. "None but aerial companions," says he, "suited my fancy; no roof seemed so secure to me as that formed of the dense foliage under which the feathered tribes were seen to resort, or the caves and fissures of the massy rocks to which the dark-winged cormorant and the curlew retired to rest, or to protect themselves from the fury of the tempest." With increasing years, a desire for the actual possession of his favorites grew up in his mind. But this longing was nowise satiated by the possession of them dead: with their life their charms were gone. At this period his father showed him a book of illustrations--of no very high artistic excellence, we may well believe. A bush thrown into certain solutions, in a particular state, will cause crystalization. The young enthusiast's mind was in such a state--the vague desires, the indefinite longings crystalized around that Book of Illustrations. He longed to be a creator. To imitate by lines and colors the beings he loved, became the passion of his life. But like all true artists, he was at first doomed to experience the disappointment of being unable to realize his ideal: his drawings so far from truly representing the originals, were even inferior to the engravings in his book. Every year he made hundreds, which he regularly burned upon every succeeding birthday.