17. Republic of Liberia, Examiner, 193 195 200 205 Spectator, 207 209 212 215 218 219-221 225 226 228 66 Examiner, 66 - SHORT ARTICLES. Colonies, 222.- English Law; State Dressmaking, 223.- - Distress TERMS.-The LIVING AGE is published every Satur- Agencies.-We are desirous of making arrangements, day, by E. LITTELL & Co., corner of Tremont and Brom-in all parts of North America, for increasing the circulafeld sts., Boston; Price 124 cents a number, or six dollars tion of this work-and for doing this a liberal commissio a year in advance. Remittances for any period will be will be allowed to gentlemen who will interest themselve thankfully received and promptly attended to. To in the business. And we will gladly correspond on this insure regularity in mailing the work, orders should be subject with any agent who will send us undoubted refer addressed to the office of publication, as above. Clubs, paying a year in advance, will be supplied as follows: Postage. 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The volumes are published quarterly, each volume containing as much matter as a quarterly review gives in eighteen months. WASHINGTON, 27 DEC., 1845. Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this has appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind 10 the utmost expansion of the present age. J. Q. ADAMS LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 221.-5 AUGUST, 1848. From the Church of England Quarterly Review. Zoological Recreations. By W. T. BRODERIP, Esq., F. R. S., &c. One Volume, 8vo. London: Henry Colburn. AFTER hot contention and fierce fray, sweet and profitable is it to go like Isaac, and meditate in the fields at eventide. Festus in pratis is a phrase of the ancient lyrist which has always rung in our ears as merrily as wedding bells: it is at once an invitation, a promise, and a performance -an invitation that no wise man may resist-a promise on which every experienced man will rely-and a performance that, to be realized, depends only upon him who puts faith in the promise. Festus in pratis! Happy is he who can leave dissension in towns, and walk forth into the meadows. What a cherished minion of nature doth he then become!-he is really, reverently speaking, something godlike: the zephyrs caress him-a thousand winged influences prick him on to enjoyment—the pure spirit which mortals call oxygen stimulates his blood by force of irresistible magic, to dance with frolic healthfulness in his veins the aspect of nature helps him to understand nature's God, and to adore with increased fervor Him whom he had adored before as the God of revelation. And this worship begets worship; for at each footstep, as he advances, the blessed earth sends up incense from her crushed grass; and, standing on that which veils the ruins of sixty centuries of mortality here below, and gazing upwards at the veil which hangs before the throne of immortality above, man confesses the imperishable greatness of the one, the passing beauty of the other, and the lessons and the happiness which he derives from both. And now again is the joyous season of instruction and gladness at hand : En etiam, si quis Boream horrere solebat ; Gaudeat a Zephyris mollior aura venit. There is a breath of spring abroad, and the bosom of the most ancient but ever youthful mother is decked with early flowers : Nec fera tempestas toto tamen horret in anno But the earth and the seasons bring enjoyments only to those who merit them. The mere idler in the fields will never experience what it is to become Festus in pratis. Recreation is for the active man-not for the sluggard. The great original curse has, by immutable benevolence, been converted into a blessing for those who take the yoke willingly; who, condemned to labor, labor with zeal; and who neither doubt the justice of the universal sentence nor strive to evade it. These, having labored, are denied neither repose nor pure VOL. XVIII. 16 CCXXI. LIVING AGE. pleasures; but the idle man who is, emphatically, the devil's man-who, seeking to escape labor, labors doubly and unrequitedly in the attempt-to him there is no rest in relaxation: it is but a shifting of his burden-no procuring of enjoyment or instruction to his spirit." Qui laborat, orat," says St. Augustin. The active Christian is the best servant of God, and for him are reserved the rewards due to good and faithful followers of their Master. How eloquently has Dr. Croly-in his recently published volume of sermons-how eloquently and how truthfully has he pictured that unhappy race to be found among all classes of life to whom much has been given, and who return nothing, save blank disappointment to sanguine expectation. Even in the full light, says the graphic rector of St. Stephen's Walbrook even in the full light of the purest form how perversely it is resisted by the wilfulness of of Christianity, are we not often compelied to feel man? How vast a class exist who, misinterpreting an exemption from labor into a discharge from duty, cast life away among the triflings of the hour-who. returning nothing to the great ever-open treasury of the happiness and the wisdom of human nature -slaves of self-indulgence and incapable of selfcontrol, feel existence only to avoid all its nobler uses-lavish time, talent, and opulence, in a fruitless pursuit of faded pleasure; and at length, experiencing the vanity of human things without the moral of the lesson, after encumbering the earth, disappear into a forgotten tomb. It is upon those that Christianity calls with an especial voice of remonstrance; that she utters a cry of stern sorrow grace is not to achieve virtue; that grasping them in their ear; that she tells them that to escape diswith the strong hand of satire and sarcasm she would check them in their dance of death, and force the revellers to see the terrible partner with whom they are floating through the frantic festivity of the world. In these sounding phrases are well-limned, not merely the opulent faineant, but the languid son of laziness that is to be found in every rank of society-who hangs like a mill-stone round the neck of his kinsman's prosperity-and who makes sorrow a permanent dweller at the paternal hearth. It is the object of a certain class of writers to picture the wealthy generally, and the aristocracy in particular, as the only sluggard and unproductive classes; but the truth is that the monopoly of slothfulness is very far from being confined to the consumere fruges nati; there are other unproductive people besides the knights and gentlemen of the "Bridal of Triermain " Lordlings and witlings, not a few, But to return to our first assertion-unspeakable | and, lastly, the graceful swan, wild and tame, with is the pleasure of exchanging turmoil for tranquil- a dissertation on May, close the first part of a vollity; the town, made by man, for the country and ume wherein scenery is depicted with a skilful and a country things created by God; controversy for loving hand-wherein wisdom and mirth smile content; the hot assertion and the fierce retort for like the "simplices nymphæ" of Horace-and the native wood-notes of our warblers wild and the wherein all is as gay and twice as innocent as soothing music of rippling brooks. How dark and Etherige's "whole bevy of damsels-in sky, and lowering have been the storms which have recent- pink, and flame-colored taffetas." ly threatened-nay, assailed-both church and state, we need not, happily for us, pause here to relate. Thrice happy do we feel that we may escape from them; and, under the frank and pleasant guidance of Mr. Broderip, who, Nourri dans le serail en connait les detours, go forth into the green fields to be silent, to learn, and to enjoy. He has a right to express his happiness who, snatched from the very thickest of a fray, finds himself suddenly afar from strife and malaria, the blue sky above him, the teeming earth beneath, Mr. Broderip at his side, and the Hampden controversy, the Jew bill, the swelling income tax, relations with Rome, and French republics, all for the nonce unheeded or forgotten. In a magic land will he find himself who, once opening the leaves of "Zoological Recreations," will yield himself to its gentle persuasion and forswear polemics. The change is sudden-there is no reluctant following through miry ways or thorny paths the author sets you down in the country at once you may have been the moment before, like Aladdin, in the midst of a wilderness of howling African lions; but only open gently one leaf, and you are in a fairer garden than was ever selected for harmonious retreat by the Bagdad bulbuls. The fields sparkle with gladness; the streams fling back in double light the light flung down upon them from above; the dark woody dells look as though they had here and there golden-barked trees, which, in fact, are only the beeches more closely kissed by the sunshine; and then what harmony accompanying all!-as in truth there must needs be in the happy spring time when we have entered upon the ten weeks' season of unmatchable song which is annually vouchsafed to us by the loves, desires, fears, or wanton idleness of our wild and feathered choristers. The leaves devoted to the singing birds-we do not speak it in a punning sense-are among the most brilliant and amusing of the book-we may add, among the most instructive; for there is a world of instruction and novelty to be found in the details afforded of the private and public life of the plumy denizens of the woods-of their manners. morals, costume, social relations, their characteristics, language, and architecture. Into these we can, to use the words of that rough copy of Anacreon, Captain Morris, only “dip and fly like swallows in a lake!" It was Voltaire or some such philosophical sciolist-stealing the thought, after all, from antiquity who was wont to say that man was nothing more than a bird without feathers. On perusing these pages we are occasionally inclined to say that a bird is a passionate man with the feathers to boot. The musical London world of last season was, if we may credit what we read, possessed of two singing birds-the one a southern skylark, the other a "Swedish nightingale"-compared with whom the warbling slave of the Caliph Yezed was but as a horned owl to a swan of Caystor. The public journals revealed to our breakfast circles the exalting rivalry carried on by these gifted daughters of song, each “ rara quidem facie, sed rarior arte canendi;” and daily were we told how this rivalry was kept warm and nourished by the respective partisans of either house. A rivalry as fierce and harmonious reigns in every wood where songsters most do congregate there a melodious note of defiance is no sooner sounded than it is accepted, repeated, and excelled, only to have note of acceptance made in return and with increase of gushing sweetness. Rival birds, indeed, have been known to take the challenge, and to carry on the tuneful contest until, of one or both, the delicate vessels of the lungs have burst, and the song of triumph has been but the hymn for the dead. But wonderful, and generally secure, is the organization of the smallest singers with the widest compass of voice. The larynx of the nightingale, which one would sometimes think was about to split asunder, is, in fact, strengthened by the use; it has wear, but not tear-the more it sings the better its organ is adapted for singing; and, though a poetical writer in the Bath Journal has said of In spring the singing birds take precedence of everything, save the flowers, of which they seem almost a part, giving interpretation to sweet incense by sweet song. To the forest choir, then, Mr. Broderip devotes his opening pages; and as one who loves as deeply as he knows them, does he discourse of plumed harmonists, whether resident or migratory of the cuckoo, who, like an incipient Hullah-ite, is everlastingly practising his thirdsof owls with whom are midnight gayety, and it that— gravity at noon-and then of the loquacious and, -the nightingale sings best When her warm and downy breast Is bleeding with the thorn; yet it is matter of simple fact, that excellence with the nightingale is as it is with the striving children of men-it is practice that makes perfect. a thing for Anglo-gentility to turn up its nose at; but let it only come from Fulda, capable of piping "Freut euch des Lebens," or "Sie sollen ihn nicht haben," and forthwith it is a bird that may fetch guineas, and pour forth its foreign sweetness in royal drawing-rooms. And thus it is with the chaffinch. Our dear native chaffinch is a love of a bird; it sings like a fairy, but it woos the listener that it ought to command, and too often woos in vain. England cares nothing for the The parental note is the natural note of the bird; all power and nature of singing is thence derived. Deprive a fledgling of all access to the hearing of that note, and he will adopt the first of which he is permitted to be conscious. Thus, we have heard of a speaking thrush. Some birds have adopted, as far as in them lay, the sounds of animals; and Gresset's "Ver vert" is a sad and lasting example of the facility with which certain birds, as well as men, learn wickedness, and have their manners corrupted by evil communications. | English chaffinch, and Germany adores it. A But, whatever they learn, the birds have the best of it-singing never ruins them. Not so with less perfect humanity; a good voice has been a passport to destruction, and there have been more mothers than Niobe who have had to bewail that their sons had turned musical. There is truth in many an old adage, as there is virtue in many an old-fashioned herb. "As the old bird crows, the young cock will sing," stands good throughout all feathered nature-and beyond it-seeing that there is good ground for asserting that man owes something, too, to that instruction which he has bettered, and that the last chef d'auvre of melodious Mendelsohn may be traced back, by any one curious enough to make the inquiry, to the little throats that, in the childhood of creation, had no teacher but the sovereign will, which, commanding harmony, so created it ! good one carried to Germany, will set whole villages, in Thuringia, in an ecstasy of delight. The bird might burst its heart before an English peasant would arrest his step to heed it; while a Thuringian boor would, with an Arab-like sacrifice where a favorite horse is to be yielded, give his best cow for it. Where is the parallel? Even here-Dr. Wesley, one of the greatest men who ever set his foot on the pedal of an organ, is a familiar and revered name in Germany. In England he is only known to the profession, little prized by it, and less known beyond it! So Miss Novello, who could hardly warm the fastidiousness of Exeter Hall into listening to her singing of sacred music, rendered universal Leipsig mad with admiration. She went abroad to become a countess, instead of remaining at home to instruct obtusity at half a crown an hour! So Miss Edwards, under her musical name of "Favanti," enthralls Trieste after some of our provincial cathedral choirs had coldly listened without being touched. Miss Hayes, who probably has never dreamed of gaining admittance into Buckingham palace, has shaken the Vatican itself with the power of her voice; and so of others, who, being nothing more than native chaffinches, meet with neglect at home, and are taken or driven abroad, where the chaffinches are exchanged for cows, and the English songstresses are deemed worthy of coronets! Whether every winged thing, whose nomenclature was fixed, in Paradise, by our great father, was also a thing of winged melody, is a question we may leave to be discussed and answered both affirmatively and negatively, (as they do always,) by the Jewish rabbis. However this may be, there is one bird of prey, at least, which retains a fulness of primæval power of song. This is the savage but musical hawk or falcon of Africa, whose song is as sweet and fascinating as its nature is fierce, and its appetite unappeasable. In Britain we have nothing like this; indeed, with us, the sweetest of our singing birds are elegant Who was the most glorious native singer of visitors from Italy; and, like their human proto- sacred music which England ever possessed? It types, who visit us about the same period, and so- was the niece of the Rev. Mr. Warton, who was journ with us for about the same extent of time, the son of the Rev. Dr. Warton, erst master of they come only for the profit to be derived from their Winchester school. But so to describe her is to sojourn. The uccelli resort hither for better food; cover her with incognito. The British vocalist the signore for something equally moving-the we allude to was herself the daughter of a family means of procuring it. This very month, we be-eminent for vocal as well as general musical abililieve, is the month for the immigration. A few ty-the Mahons of Oxford. Mrs. Salmon was a harbingers have already arrived, but the great native chaffinch. She captivated by sweetness, flock has yet to come. The most costly executes least efficient service-the birds rid us of our devastating slugs and snails-the human singers rid us of nothing but our guineas. The more we peruse Mr. Broderip's admirable book, the more we are struck with the analogy that may be drawn between birds and men. As we love foreign artists, so do we affect foreign birds. We do not lack very clever bullfinches; and yet Germany has bullfinch seminaries at Fulda, Hesse, and Waltershausen, to supply England with pipers of that race. A vulgar Soho bullfinch, that should whistle you "Black-eyed Susan," were delicacy, and variety-by exquisite ornament, and by a rare facility, which, while it left the judgment free, won upon the senses. No oratorio of her day was considered perfect unless she were there to interpret the sublime thoughts of Mozart, Handel, Haydn, and Beethoven. But the foreign birds drove her from her "coign of vantage ;" she became less thought of-little inquired after. Upon injured pride came excessive grief, and loss of voice and intemperance upon both. With the guineas flung to Cuzzoni, in her merited destitution, she bought bottles of wine to soak her penny loaves in; but we did not enable our own vocalist ceive," and then, incapable of delivering his ideas by expression, sat down in confusion-so the French speaker, having three times pronounced the undisputed fact, "L'homme est un animal!" retired from the tribune, ashamed of his attempt. The attempt, however, if not witty in itself, was the cause of wit in others; for a member present immediately arose and proposed that their honorable colleague's speech should be printed for circulation, with a portrait of the author annexed! to purchase even the loaf. We came in, as na-un animal!" Like the blushing English borough tional aid too often does, more in time to provide member, who thrice uttered the words, "I conher with a funeral than a feast, and she died almost unconscious of the tardy help given her to make the last step towards the brink of the grave. Reading Mr. Broderip's interesting details of our native singing birds reminded us of these things, and we could not help detailing them in return. Every page we turn furnishes us with something by way of analogy or parallel. We know, for instance, that many a singer, greatly inferior in talent to the great niece of Dr. Warton, stole some of her graces, and with them caught or attracted provincial audiences. Men took them from travelled songstresses as original Italian graces, and were captivated accordingly. We find something akin to this in Mr. Broderip's volume, where he tells that cunning anglers are wont to steal the tail-feathers from the common wren, in order to represent spring spiders wherewith to catch simple trout. "L'homme," then, "est un animal!" Man is an animal, indisputably; and, in treating of animals, we may not omit to notice man. Indeed, at every page of the charming work before us, we are forcibly reminded of the similitude which exists between many animals and man! Take the ortolan-that savory bird, of which a French epicure naturalist could only say of it that "it was easy of digestion." We find Mr. Broderip deWe doubt if in any of our biographical dictiona- scribing this much-loved and high-fed bird in deries we discover the name of Eugenius Nicholas tails as copious as they are clever and amusing. Egan. He was another native who has only A greater glutton does not exist among birds, but found celebrity abroad. He was, perhaps, the we read of his prototype, an hour or two ago, most accomplished organist that ever compelled among men. We found him in the pages of Mr. majestic harmony from the monster instrument. Arthur's "Narrative of a Mission to the Mysore," Barretti speaks in rapturous terms of him. This and in the person of the most pious and obese of traveller found him at Mafra, in Portugal. He| Brahmans. This huge feeder, at the end of a describes him as a perfect starveling in size and large feast, groaned aloud at the suffering he exappearance, but as a giant with respect to genius. perienced from excessive thirst. "Why do you His appointment of royal organist at Mafra he not take some water?" inquired a compassionate had won over eight competitors whom the king bystander. "Fool!" growled the Brahmanhad invited from Italy, Germany and Flanders."do you think that if I had room for water, I Egan conquered them all by the subtilty of his would not have eat more sweetmeats?" genius. Barretti says that he learned his art in London; but there are, perhaps, not three individuals in the metropolis who ever heard of him. He could not live in England at all; and, with all his talents, we regret to say that he appears to have gained but an indifferent livelihood abroad. Barretti thus speaks of him : : Quel 'organajo é un piccolino di statura e uno delle piu sparute persone ch'io m'abbia viste mai ma l'ingegno che racchiude in quel suo corpicello é maraviglioso. Egli s'ha ottenuto il posto d'organajo reale a preferenza d'otto altri provetti maestri d'organi che il re presenti aveva fatti venire d'Italia, di Germania, e di Fiandra, vicendoli tutti con le sue sottilé 'nvenzioni......Il suo nome è Eugenio Nicolao Egan. Di Patria è Irlandese. Il mestiero lo imparo in Londra. La paga datagli dal re non ha la debita propozione co' suoi rari talenti. But both birds and men have also achieved good reputations from no better cause then misapprehensions of action. Poets and zoologists have wasted a world of rhyme and hypothesis upon the piety of those pretty swallows which are known, or which are supposed, to bury their dead; but we believe this arises from selfishness. We are afraid rites over the bodies of our lamented young friends, that even the robins who performed their maimed the Children in the Wood, were impelled more by offence conveyed to their sensations than pity for the victims of that wicked uncle near Norwich! However this may be, it is clear that the swallows are by no means worthy of the reputation they have achieved for pity or parental affection. Mr. Broderip shows that they will, under certain circumstances and necessity, abandon their young to starvation and death in their nests; and he reIt may be thought that we have travelled some- counts a story of the old birds, on returning to the thing out of our record by noticing these matters; nest, trying to eject the dead bodies of their little but, in themselves, they are curious; and man ones; and, not succeeding, resorting to the promay be legitimately treated of in a paper touching cess of covering them with clay, and thus building on and discussing "Zoological Recreations;" for them a sepulchre! But the contrivance was worman is an animal. He has been even senatorially thy commendation however impelled; nor can we declared so to be in the old French chamber of dep- peruse any of the charming descriptions in Mr. A somewhat timid speaker, whose name Broderip's pages without being reminded through has fallen from the tablets of our memory, once these simple birds-without having brought close commenced a speech before that critical and exem- to our hearts the renewed conviction of the wisplary assembly with the words, "L'homme est dom and benevolence of the Creator. uties. |