terms elsewhere. Both perceived that the new plants afforded better shelter from wind and rain, than anything which they had seen before; there was room enough for both; and the neighbourhood produced so much good will, that the gulls protected the weaker birds not only against the ravens who are common enemies, but against another species of gull also which attacks the duck's

nest.

A change more remarkable than either of these is that which the common hearthcricket has undergone in its very constitution as well as in all its ways of life, since men built houses and inhabited cold cli

mates.

The field-cricket in North America, which buries itself during the winter ten inches deep, and there lies torpid, began about an hundred years ago to avail itself of the work of man and take up its abode in the chimnies. This insect even likes man for a bed-fellow, not with any such felonious intentions as are put in execution by smaller and viler vermin, but for the sake of warmth. The Swedish traveller, Kalm, says that when he and his companions were forced to sleep in uninhabited places, the crickets got into the folds of their garments, so that they were obliged to make some tarriance every morning, and search carefully before they could get rid of them.

*

Two species of Swallows have domesticated themselves with man. We have only that which builds under the eaves in England, but in North America they have both the house swallow and the chimney swallow; the chimnies not being made use of in summer, they take possession, and keep it sometimes in spite of the smoke, if the fire is not very great. Each feather in this bird's tail ends in a stiff point, like the end of an awl; they apply the tail to the side of the wall, and it assists in keeping them up, while they

This looks like a mistake; we have the chimney swallow also, the Hirundo rustica. It is the Martin, or the Hirundo urbica, that builds under the eaves. Besides these we have the Hirundo riparia, or Sand-Martin, and the Hirundo Apus, or Swift. I say it looks like a mistake, but what follows makes it doubtful.

hold on with their feet. "They make a great thundering noise all day long by flying up and down in the chimnies;" now as the Indians had not so much as a hearth made of masonry, it is an obvious question, says Kalm, where did these swallows build before the Europeans came, and erected houses with chimnies? Probably, it is supposed, in hollow trees, but certainly where they could; and it is thus shown that they took the first opportunity of improving their own condition.

But the Doctor dwelt with most pleasure on the intellectual capabilities of Dogs. There had been Dogs, he said, who, from the mere desire of following their master's example, had regularly frequented either the Church or the Meeting House; others who attended the Host whenever they heard the bell which announced that it was carried abroad; one who so modulated his voice as to accompany instrumental music through all the notes of a song; and Leibnitz had actually succeeded in teaching one to speak. A dog may be made an epicure as well as his master. He acquires notions of rank and respectability; understands that the aristocracy are his friends, regards the beggar as his rival for bones, and knows that whoever approaches in darkness is to be suspected for his intentions. A dog's physiognomical discernment never deceives him; and this the Doctor was fond of observing, because wherever he was known the dogs came to return the greeting they expected. He has a sense of right and wrong as far as he has been taught; a sense of honour and of duty, from which his master might sometimes take a lesson; and not unfrequently a depth and heroism of affection, which the Doctor verily believed would have its reward in a better world. John Wesley held the same opinion, which has been maintained also by his enemy, Augustus Toplady, and by his biographer, the laureated LL. D. or the El-el-deed Laureate. The Materialist, Dr. Dove would argue, must allow, upon his own principles, that a dog has as much soul as himself; and the Immaterialist, if he would be consistent, must perceive that the

life, and affections, and actions of an animal are as little to be explained as the mysteries of his own nature by mere materiality. The all-doubting, and therefore always halfbelieving Bayle has said that les actions des bêtes sont peut-être un des plus profonds abimes sur quoi notre raison se puisse exercer. But here the Doctor acknowledged himself to be in doubt. That another state of existence there must be for every creature wherein there is the breath of life he was verily persuaded.* To that conclusion the whole tenor of his philosophy led him, and what he entertained as a philosophical opinion, acquired from a religious feeling something like the strength of faith. For if the whole of a brute animal's existence ended in this world, then it would follow that there are creatures born into it, for whom it had been better never to have been, than to endure the privations, pains, and wrongs and cruelties, inflicted upon them by human wickedness; and he would not, could not, dared not believe that any, even the meanest of God's creatures, has been created to undergo more of evil than of good-(where no power of choice was given) - much less to suffer unmingled evil, during its allotted term of existence. Yet this must be, if there were no state for animals after death.

A French speculator upon such things (I think it was P. Bougeant) felt this so strongly as to propose the strange hypothesis that fallen Angels underwent their punishment in the bodies of brutes, wherein they were incarnate and incarcerate as sentient, suffering and conscious spirits. The Doctor's theory of progressive life was liable to no such objections. It reconciled all seeming evil in the lower creation to the great system of benevolence. But still there remained a difficulty. Men being what they are, there were cases in which it seemed that the animal soul would be degraded instead of advanced by entering into the human form. For example, the Doctor considered the beast to be very often a much worthier animal than the butcher; the horse than the horse

But see Eccles. c. iii. v. 21.

jockey or the rider; the cock than the cock-fighter; the young whale than the man who harpoons the reasonable and dutiful creature when it suffers itself to be struck rather than forsake its wounded mother.

In all these cases indeed, a migration into some better variety of the civilised biped might be presumed, Archeus bringing good predispositions and an aptitude for improvement. But when he looked at a good dog (in the best acceptation of the epithet), — a dog who has been humanised by human society,-who obeys and loves his master, pines during his illness, and dies upon his grave (the fact has frequently occurred), the Doctor declared his belief, and with a voice and look which told that he was speaking from his heart, that such a creature was ripe for a better world than this, and that in passing through the condition of humanity it might lose more than it could gain.

The price of a dog might not, among the Jews, be brought into the House of the Lord, "for any vow," for it was an abomination to the Lord. This inhibition occurs in the same part of the Levitical law which enjoins the Israelites not to deliver up to his master the servant who had escaped from him: and it is in the spirit of that injunction, and of those other parts of the Law which are so beautifully and feelingly humane, that their very tenderness may be received in proof of their divine origin. It looks upon the dog as standing to his master in far other relation than his horse or his ox or his ass,— as a creature connected with him by the moral ties of companionship, and fidelity, and friendship.

CHAPTER CXLVI.

DANIEL DOVE VERSUS SENECA AND BEN JONSON. ORLANDO AND HIS HORSE AT RONCESVALLES. MR. BURCHELL. THE PRINCE OF ORANGE. THE LORD KEEPER GUILDFORD. REV. MR. HAWTAYN. DR. THOMAS JACKSON. THE ELDER SCALIGER. EVELYN. AN ANONYMOUS AMERICAN. WALTER LANDOR, AND CAROLINE BOWLES.

-Contented with an humble theme

I pour my stream of panegyric down

The vale of Nature, where it creeps and winds
Among her lovely works with a secure
And unambitious course, reflecting clear,
If not the virtues, yet the worth of brutes.
COWPER.

THE Doctor liked not Seneca when that philosopher deduced as a consequence from his definition of a benefit, that no gratitude can be due to beasts or senseless things: nam, qui beneficium mihi daturus est, he says, debet non tantum prodesse, sed velle. Ideo nec mutis animalibus quidquam debetur; et quam multos è periculo velocitas equi rapuit! Nec arboribus; et quam multos æstu laborantes ramorum opacitas texit! that is, "for he who is about to render me a good service, not only ought to render it, but to intend it. Nothing, therefore, can be owed to dumb animals, and yet how many have the speed of a horse saved from danger! Nor to trees, and yet how many when suffering under the summer sun, have the thick | boughs shaded!" To the same tenor Ben Jonson speaks. "Nothing is a courtesy," he says, "unless it be meant us, and that friendly and lovingly. We owe no thanks to rivers that they carry our boats; or winds that they be favouring, and fill our sails; or meats that they be nourishing; for these are what they are necessarily.

Horses carry

us, trees shade us, but they know it not." What! our friend would say, do I owe thee nothing, Nobs, for the many times that thou hast carried me carefully and safely, through bad ways, in stormy weather, and in dark nights? Do I owe thee nothing for thy painful services, thy unhesitating obedience, thy patient fidelity? Do I owe thee

nothing for so often breaking thy rest, when thou couldest not know for what urgent cause mine had been broken, nor wherefore I was compelled by duty to put thee to thy speed? Nobs, Nobs, if I did not acknowledge a debt of gratitude to thee, and discharge it as far as kind usage can tend to prolong thy days in comfort, I should deserve to be dropped as a colt in my next stage of existence, to be broken in by a rough rider, and broken down at last by hard usage in a hackney coach.

There is not a more touching passage in Italian poetry than that in which Pulci relates the death of Orlando's famous horse (his Nobs) in the fatal battle of Roncesvalles :

Vegliantin come Orlando in terra scese,
A pie del suo signor caduto è morto,
E inginocchiossi e licenzia gli chiese,
Quasi dicesse, io t'ho condotto a porto.
Orlando presto le braccia distese

A l'acqua, e cerca di dargli conforto,
Ma poi che pure il caval non si sente,
Si condolea molto pietosamente.

O Vegliantin, tu m' hai servito tanto:

O Vegliantin, dov' è la tua prodezza?
O Vegliantin, nessun si dia piu vanto;
O Vegliantin, venuta è l' ora sezza:
O Vegliantin, tu m' hai cresciuto il pianto ;
O Vegliantin, tu non vuoi piu cavezza :
O Vegliantin, s' io ti feci mai torto,
Perdonami, ti priego, cosi morto.

Dice Turpin, che mi par maraviglia,
Che come Orlando perdonamt disse,
Quel caval parve ch' aprisse le ciglia,
E col capo e co gesti acconsentisse.*

A traveller in South Africa, Mr. Burchell, who was not less adventurous and persevering than considerate and benevolent, says that "nothing but the safety of the whole party, or the urgency of peculiar and inevitable circumstances, could ever, during his whole journey, induce him to forget the consideration due to his cattle, always regarded as faithful friends whose assistance was indispensable. There may be in the world," he says, "men who possess a nature so hard, as to think these sentiments misapplied; but I leave them to find, if they can, in the coldness of their own hearts, a satisfaction equal to that which I have enjoyed in paying a grateful attention to

* MORGANTE MAGGIORE.

animals by whose services I have been so much benefited."

The Prince of Orange would once have been surprised and taken in his tent by the Spaniards if his dog had not been more vigilant than his guards. Julian Romero planned and led this night attack upon the Prince's camp; the camisado was given so suddenly, as well as with such resolution, "that the place of arms took no alarm, until their fellows," says Sir Roger Williams, were running in with the enemy in their tail; whereupon this dog, hearing a great noise, fell to scratching and crying, and withal leaped on the Prince's face, awaking him, being asleep, before any of his men.' Two of his secretaries were killed hard by the tent, and "albeit the Prince lay in his arms, with a lacquey always holding one of his horses ready bridled, yet at the going out of his tent, with much ado he recovered his horse before the enemy arrived. One of his squires was slain taking horse presently after him, and divers of his servants which could not recover theirs, were forced to escape amongst the guards of foot. Ever after until the Prince's dying day, he kept one of that dog's race, —so did many of his friends and followers. The most or all of these dogs were white little hounds, with crooked noses, called camuses."

The Lord Keeper Guildford "bred all his horses, which came to the husbandry first colts, and from thence, as they were fit, were taken into his equipage; and as by age or accident they grew unfit for that service, they were returned to the place from whence they came, and there expired." This is one of the best traits which Roger North has related of his brother.

The gentlest natures indeed are the best, and the best will be at the same time the most grateful and the most tender. "Even to behold a flourishing tree, first bereft of bark," says Dr. Jackson, "then of all the naked branches, yet standing, lastly the green trunk cut down and cast full of sap into the fire, would be an unpleasant spectacle to such as delighted in setting, pruning, or nourishing plants."

The elder Scaliger, as Evelyn tells us, never could convince Erasmus but that trees feel the first stroke of the axe; and Evelyn himself seems to have thought there was more probability in that opinion than he liked to allow. "The fall of a very aged oak," he says, "giving a crack like thunder, has been often heard at many miles' distance; ́ nor do I at any time hear the groans without some emotion and pity, constrained, as I too often am, to fell them with much reluctancy." Mr. Downes, in his Letters from the Continent, says, "There is at this time a forest near Bolsena so highly venerated for its antiquity, that none of the trees are ever cut."†

One who, we are told, has since been honourably distinguished for metaphysical speculation, says, in a juvenile letter to the late American Bishop Hobart, "I sometimes converse a considerable time with a tree that in my infancy invited me to play under its cool and refreshing shade; and the old dwelling in which I have spent the greater part of my life, though at present unoccupied and falling into ruin, raises within me such a musing train of ideas, that I know not whether it be pleasing or painful. Now whether it arise from an intimate association of ideas, or from some qualities in the insensible objects themselves to create an affection, I shall not pretend to determine; but certain it is that the love we bear for objects incapable of making a return, seems always more disinterested, and frequently affords us more lasting happiness than even that which we feel toward rational creatures."

"Stat vetus, et multos incædua silva per annos," &c. OVID.