Sprinkle the cloth all the time it is roasting, to preserve its crest. When it is roasted enough, tie the feet on again, remove the cloth, set up the crest, replace the skin, spread out the tail, and so serve it up. Some people, instead of serving up the bird in the feathers, carry their magnificence so far as to cover their peacock with leaf gold! Others have a very pleasant way of regaling their guests: just before they serve up, they cram the beak of the peacock with wool, rubbed with camphor; then, when the dish is placed upon the table. they set fire to the wool, and the bird instantly vomits out flames. like a little volcano ! In tracing the history of several chivalric institutions, Mr. Mills introduces us, incidentally, to the Italian origin of the name of blue stocking, as applied to coteries of literary ladies, to which ladies, by the way, as seen in so many estimable examples, like a courteous knight, he pays due and formal homage. Of the pleasant and attractive reading of the present work, the foregoing remarks may lead to the expectation, that nothing remains in the way of recommending to it very extensive perusal. LONDON LYRICS. An Actor's Meditations during his First London Season. How well I remember when old Drury Lane First open'd, a child in the Thespian train, I acted a Sprite in a sky-colour'd cloak, And danced round the cauldron which now I invoke. Speak, Witches! an Actor's nativity cast! Ye laugh, jibing beldames!-Ay! laugh well we may ! 'Tis a breath of light air from Frivolity's mouth; The Actor, who tugs half his life at the oar, i Thanks, provident hags; while my circuit I run, Then let me the haven of competence reach, HUMANITY AND MR. MARTIN. Of all the functions with which man is endowed, that which he exercises the most rarely and imperfectly is thought. Very few of the species have their ideas sufficiently at command to express themselves clearly upon paper; and of these few, a still smaller proportion exercise their powers; except upon the ready-made generalities which language has prepared for them, without originating a single new conception for themselves, either by analysis or combination. The great mass only make believe to think, and speak without understanding either their interlocutors or themselves. How otherwise could we explain the conflicting opinions afloat in society concerning the personage whose name stands at the head of this paper, or the striking inconsistencies into which both his friends and his opponents have fallen in the conduct of their arguments? True it is that this worthy individual is much addicted to some of those absurdities of language and of action of which his countrymen in general stand accused; and that his bulls, practical and oral, may well unsettle the opinions of the nothinkers; yet is the idea of his blunt practical humanity so simple and obvious, that it is difficult for one who really uses his brains to be led astray even by these. Such, however, seems to be the fact: and since R. Martin, Esq. and M.P. has determined to add a new clause to the decalogue, and to force man, by Act of Parliament, not only to love his neighbour as himself, but his ox and his ass, and every (living) thing that is his likewise, it may not be amiss to let fall a word or two upon the subject, for the benefit of those country gentlemen upon whose shoulders the liberties of England are said more peculiarly to rest. We are told in the Book of Genesis, and mankind for the most part very potently believe, that all the fowls of the air and all the beasts of the field were given to man for his service; and there is scarcely an individual, when he has, or imagines he has, an use for the said fowls and beasts, who scruples to convert them, living or dead, to his purpose, let the process put them to what torture it may. There are thousands of tender mothers of families, who would not in the least be shocked at pulling the quills from the wings of a living goose, when they wanted to write a letter; and though barbecued pigs are now out of fashion, the most kind-hearted magistrate that ever committed a sick prostitute to the tread-mill, would have few "compunctious visitings of nature," in popping a lobster alive into hot water. The arrangements of society, it is true, enable the rich to throw the coarser horrors of butchery upon their inferiors; and the sight and smell of a good roasted saddle of mutton are very completely dissevered in the imagination from the blood, and the convulsions, the bleatings, and the struggles of a slaughter-house; but, if things were otherwise disposed, the aforesaid rich would go as coolly to work, to knock down an ox, or to skin an eel, as they now go forth, sympathies and all, to shoot woodecks, dangle a trout on a string, or kill a score of horses and dogs to obtain a fox's brush. The most refined of us all look no further in our humanity than to obtain the animals we want by putting them to death (as old Isaac Walton has it)" as tenderly as if we loved them ;" and to abstain from cruelty in all cases in which there is noVOL. X. No. 59.-1825. 57 thing to be got by it. On the other hand, however, we are so organized as to sympathise with the sufferings of all beings capable of expressing their feelings; and the spectacle of the misery of the larger and more perfect animals is extremely annoying, whenever their tortures are not at once convertible into amusement or gain. This gives us a direct interest in impressing forbearance upon our fellow men in all cases in which their wants, and not our own, are concerned; and thus it happens that a man may be overwhelmed with misery at the sufferings of the calves and oxen in Smithfield, who would be delighted to roast half his own species there, if they presumed to differ from him in opinion. Thus much being premised, it may be concluded that no one tortures the inferior animals without an object; and that some good, real or imaginary, is sought for, in all such exercises of ingenuity, from Domitian's butchery of a fly, to the blinding of singing-birds, the enlargement of a goose's liver, and the wholesale consumption of children in a cotton-factory. Now all the difference between cruelty and no cruelty, between use and abuse, lies in the dignity and utility of the ends for which such torture may be the means; and with reference to Mr. Martin's acts for preventing cruelty towards animals, in the lower classes of the community, it must be observed that the pains and penalties they inflict must be fully justified, provided the end sought be of sufficient importance to warrant their infliction. That this end is not, as is pretended, the sparing the animals so protected, is evident, because, in that case, the acts would have been so contrived as to have embraced the similar offences of the great. We should have had an act for preventing the empalement of worms; an act for suppressing horse-races, an act for regulating the number of head of game to be slaughtered in any single day's sport, &c. &c. The real end sought by Mr. Martin must therefore be to spare the feelings of those who have no direct interest in the forbidden practices, no love for bullbaitings, no hurry to be conveyed to their destination by over-driven hackney-coach horses, no acquaintance with the difficulty of driving a pig or a flock of sheep. It is no new observation, that men are most powerfully affected with anger, at those backslidings of their neighbours, in which they themselves find neither pleasure nor profit, and that it is part of our common nature to It cannot then be denied, that this is a legitimate object of legislation, fully justifying the legal inflictions in question. If the legislative part of the community, therefore, fancy that by fining, imprisoning, and treadmilling those who have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them, they shorten their own road to heaven; Heaven forbid we should tax them with wanton cruelty in so doing! Judging indeed by analogy, there is no more cruelty in sending a hackney coachman, or drover, to prison, for driving too fast, than in filling half the gaols of England with poachers and trespassers for the better preservation of hares and partridges. There certainly is much less of hardship in committing a rogue and a vagabond for attending a bull-bait, than in pinning a pauper to his parish, and forcibly preventing him from earning his bread where labour is most in demand: and there are very few of us who would not infinitely prefer a month's close custody in the service of oxen and sheep, to being hanged at the Old Bailey for the security of the Bank of England's bungling notes. If the protection of the suffering animals were indeed the great object of this novel mode of law-making, I do not dispute that the good would not be great. There is something infinitely touching in the mute sufferings of a helpless brute, and the truth of Hogarth's induction from wanton cruelty towards beasts to homicide is undeniable. 1 by no means presume that the cold-blooded indifference of country gentlemen, in that round of torturing so strangely called field sports, is any the slightest justification of the barbarity of the lower classes; and if a man of a thousand a year, who knows no better, can find pleasure in breaking a noble horse's heart by over-riding, or in flogging a pointer into obedience, in running down a stag, or breaking a partridge's wing or a hare's leg, that does not excuse the brute in ragged breeches and a dirty shirt, who delights in bear-baitings, finds amusement in beating sheep about the head, or derives pleasure from drawing a badger. If the owner of a horse chooses to put the animal to ineffable tortures, merely to give its tail a handsome set, that does not diminish the atrocity of his servant in "making a raw" and flogging upon it, in order that the sluggish beast may go with less trouble and fatigue to the driver. The protection of the poor sufferers would in both cases be worthy of an enlightened nation: still we admit that end would be much better attained by giving both classes of offenders a somewhat better education. Humanity and gentleness of disposition are acquired habits in all ranks. They are not to be created by legislation, but by the inculcation of sound principles of morality. There would, however, be this inconvenience resulting from such a remedy; that if the upper classes were properly educated, their humanity would extend to their own species; while the lower classes being so educated, as a certain Irish church dignitary observes, they would become at once irreligious and insubordinate, to the manifest disturbance of episcopal order! All attempts, therefore, at bettering the condition of the offenders, at awakening their sympathies by multiplying their comforts, or of softening their hearts by enlightening their understandings, being too dangerous to be encouraged; nothing remains for keeping them within the bounds of humanity but holding a tight rein on them. It is then a manifest injustice to censure the law-makers either for cruelty when they strike, or for partiality when they spare. If they strove indeed to include all cruelties in their enactments, they would never carry a single question, and from our not being content with part, all would be lost whereas, by working hard at extinguishing some portion of the mass of either genteel or vulgar cruelty, something is effected for the satisfaction of the sentimental and the serious, of the virtuous and enlightened. M. THEY rode along-they rode away, There rose a spectre arm upright Half in white samite clothed and bright A massy sword was in that hand, Lovely amid a lovelier scene Than fancy's skill could make. "Within that lake there is a cave, And there she dwells, that lady brave, The north-star lights her pearly bed But see, she comes, so soft her tread The lady came unto the king- And said, "King Arthur, for one thing 'Tis that whene'er I ask of thee The boon that shall repay, But grant what I shall pray!" Then by his faith King Arthur swore He row'd the boat away from land, And grasp'd it in his royal hand, The phantom arm sank in the stream, ven blue The water bubbled o'er; As it went down, a parting gleam It flash'd-'twas seen no more. Back row'd the king, his horse to take, Thus from the Lady of the Lake He won Excalibur.t * See the most ancient and famous History of Prince Arthur, King of Britain and of the Round Table. †The name of King Arthur's sword. |