as the leaves that strew the vale of Valombrosa." He has christened a maiden lady's dog of his acquaintance, from the barking objection she displays to beaus, Fanny Beauharnois (Beauannoy). A certain noted personage who set himself against the diffusion of knowledge among the poor, was called by him the modern Antinous. This is one of the puns which he says keeps "the word of promise to the eye, but breaks it the ear;" for he insists that it looks like a pun, though it must not be pronounced, or the pun is lost.

Benevolence in heart and act is, however, the best feature in his character; that benevolence that made him once drop the arm of beauty to lead a blind beggar patiently and slowly over a wide and dirty road, and look as unconscious of the kindness as if he had but thought of doing it. I have come at the knowledge of fifty similar instances of his good nature. His humanity shows itself in all things and at all times. I dined with him at a chop-house one day, where a fiddler of the most scraping description indulged the company with his most capricious capriccios; one of the party, an amateur in music, as soon as he had played through a bar or two, commenced vituperating the poor fellow in a style of genteel breeding that would not have shocked the polite Lord Chesterfield himself; my humane companion, however, checked him, in due season, with a few words which I trust he will not soon forget :- Sir," said he, “I would have you consider, in excuse for this man's playing, that it is his necessity, and not his taste or propensity, which urges him to this poor trial of his skill: give him the shilling he wants, and you will hear no more of him. I can sympathize with the fine sensibility of your ear so far, that I assure you, if it were an amateur who touched the brisk viol thus vilely, I would be the first to offend him into silence. But as the stomach of this ill-fortuned fellow is the prime mover of his elbow, and not his taste, I can hear him with patience and reward him with kindness. There is, I think, a point in bad playing, where it ceases to be offensive even to a good ear: it is sometimes too bad to be disagreeable, and has a smack, a voice of humour in it, rather than of harshness; but even when it does not reach this point, to the ear of a humane heart it will produce a patient pity rather than an impatient reproach; to such a heart, it is no more disagreeable than is the disgusting wound to the eye of the kind and self-forgotten surgeon.' The polite amateur was satisfied, and changed his tone and a half-crown at the same time, giving the ragged itinerant the better part of it as his share of the subscription.

He has known and felt the severest miseries and worst wants of life; but these things, though they have, as he asserts, made his head and feet cold, have not quite chilled his heart. Distress never appeals to him in vain. He is unmoved by ingratitude; he does not charge his species with the injustice and cruelty of his individual enemies; and the wonder is, that he should have an enemy who is the friend of all mankind. I have already intimated that he is decidedly averse to the unnecessary destruction of animal or insect life; he would not destroy, willingly, the minutest creature that makes a link in the great chain of existence, from the mite to the mammoth. In his graver moments I have heard him declare, with solemn emotion, Where necessity ends, inhumanity begins; and the human creature who inflicts one pang on an inferior being beyond what the necessity of their mutual relation demands, falls from the high rank in which God has placed him, forfeits his own worthiness, and exchanges degree with, or sinks below the creature whom he torments. It is an awful prerogative with which we are invested; life is in our hands-we may subdue it to our use, may remove it when the body which it animates is necessary for our sustenance, or when it is armed with a disposition and power to injure us; but here our authority is restrained; every thing beyond this is oppression." In a livelier mood, when adverting to the same subject, he gives play to the whimsies of his fancy. I have heard him say on such occasions, with a humorous expression of countenance, that he respected fleas for their nimble skipping spirit, and insist that they have a great deal, in a miniature frame, of the French gaieté de cœur. Yet, though he respects the lives of all things, he keeps a cat; not to catch mice, but only to awe them into good behaviour; having taught her, by rule and rod, to expel them from his territories, but to kill none, nor take prisoners! I shall not soon forget going home with him the other night; his cat had usually met his entrance, by jumping from her favourite seat on a high bracket by the chamberdoor, where a bust of Wilberforce had formerly stood;" but on this occasion, she only looked as if she would make her usual leap of welcome, but turning round again, sat herself down; this, to his quick fancy, was either dereliction of duty, or a frivolous fear (unworthy of a cat of her claws) of jumping before a stranger, or a consciousness of having done something contrary to home regulations, which made her dread his approach; going up to her, however, and patting her on the head, he inquired the state of her health, and the

colour of her conscience by breaking one word (pusillanimous) into a punning question of two parts, as follows-" puss ill? —any mouse?"-the first question being put with great tenderness, and the second in a tone somewhat between offended doubt and contemptuous reproach. She did not solve his suspicions sans doubt; but he was soon satisfied of her innocence of wilful mouse-murder, and her respect for the laws of humanity, by discovering that she had eaten the muttonchop he had left over yesterday; and this act of petty larceny he attributed to every cause that humour could invent. Perhaps it was tainted, and she feared it would make her fond master ill: perhaps it was too fat and redolent of bile, and she knew better the strength of her stomach than he the weakness of his; and perhaps it was because he had neglected giving her her wonted and wanted dinner, and was meant by her to teach him this lesson-that if he forgot his duty, and the terms upon which she had consented to live in his service, and which

"Bound each to each in natural amity,"

she must perforce forget her virtue and her respect for his conditionally-imposed laws; for hungry necessity has no niceness of conscience when the back of neglect is turned upon her-a lesson for legislators of a higher character.

As I passed with him through the suburban-fields the other day, he observed a young sportsman (who carried his cockney certificate in his face, of being duly qualified not to shoot) prowling along a hedge with his gun in his hand, and his terrier at his heels. My pleasant friend eyed him at first with a mild sort of scorn, which, however, instantly gave place to a smile of the most mixed meaning, and a look of the most profound diffidence at presuming to instruct a gentleman who looked so much like a qualified sportsman, as he informed him, in the politest manner possible, that that was a cow in the next field. I thought my gentleman's gun would have gone off with astonishment at this humorous rebuke; but, though at first he looked all swan-shot and powder, he received the information with a suppressed smile, and whistling his dog off from a dead cat, went home, I dare say, cured of his propensity for sporting. This incident turned my friend's thoughts to the cruelty of field sports generally, and to the moral consequences of an indulgence in them. It was his opinion that war, and its slaughtering ferocities, and the ferocities that occur in civil life (such as murders, duels, and other destroyings of human existence), were greatly originated and encouraged by these minor

cruelties and savage pursuits; he thought, humanely enough, that men who could destroy animals for sport, and not for existence (which may be justified though it might be done without), would, if the same licence were allowed them, hunt down and destroy their fellow-men for their autumnal amusements; and that it would, in a short time, be considered equally as fashionable and gentlemanly to bring down peasants and old women in October, as it now is to wing woodcocks and pheasants in the same season; and then he fell in his pleasant manner to imagining an Osbaldistone of this class going out with a hearse instead of a game-cart, and a pack of Israel Chapmen's and pupil bone-setters, instead of ditto of spaniels and bird-setters, and coming home in the evening, after a long day's sport, bragging and boasting of their success in hearsing, instead of bagging, a brace or two of old women, a covey of young cottagers, four paupers brought down at a parish funeral in a country churchyard, a dozen of woodmen, instead of ditto of woodcocks; two or three hedgers, instead of hedge-hogs; with cobblers, shot in their squat; tailors taken in form, and other "smalldeer," in various numbers. He thought it would be worth while to hint this to Malthus, who would, no doubt, be grateful, in two volumes octavo, for so practicable a plan for thinning our over-thickening population. Here, in the very middle of his laugh of levity, he paused, to remove with his cane one of the common blind worms that had crawled midway into the path, remarking with a humane sort of humour, that if he was blind, he should keep a snail to lead him; and if he could not afford that, he should stay at home, and let his sons go to his green-grocer's for him.

Here I suggested that this nice piece of humanity (the preservation of reptile life), though pleasing and praiseworthy in an individual like himself, was not generally practicable;-that the careless, the robust, and the unfeeling members of the world could never be brought to this delicate sense of humanity. He, however, thought it not impossible, if powerful pens would stir in so poor a cause as that of humanity; he was conscious that a feeling of this kind would meet ridicule rather than respect; but this should not deter him from advocating the cause of nature, or prevent him from respecting the meanest of her works :-" These small creatures," said he, are all the children of nature as much as man-are as dear to her, and as much her care; they are all parts of her great plan, objects of her bountiful provision, and labourers and workers in her fields and vineyards: yea, even that poor despised worm, that crawled in

the common path just now, was busy about her proper business, and does her part in her great work of husbandry, by conveying into her holes and hiding-places minute pieces of stick and straw, which, rotting into manure, enriches the earth, and makes it verdant, teeming, and fruitful. I grant it is not always possible to spare the lives of these lesser brothers of one common mother; but where it can be done it should be done. The man who would wantonly sacrifice animal or insect life, would, if the laws and the better affections of his fellow-men did not prevent him, as wickedly destroy his brother's children. If such a man were walking through his friend's farm-yard, he would be careful not to trample his young feathered brood under his feet: and why should any of us, who are indulged with walking through the green places and wild domains where nature rears her various tribes, trample and destroy the vilest and least seeming object of her regard, the meanest member of her great family? Nature, who is humane to us, deserveth our humanity." This is a philosophy of the heart rather than of the head. It is humane, but not human; yet I would recommend those who dislike the theory of my merciful friend as a whole, to indulge as far as they can in a part of his practice; it is only difficult because it is singular; but would the world be persuaded into the practising a few of his peculiar humanities, it would not be less wise, less dignified, less prudent, or less happy.-S.

BUDE.

I STOOD upon the shore of Bude, and on the deep

I bent my astonish'd eye, for such a world

Of raging waters, and unbroken foam,

I never yet beheld! That sparkling foam

Show'd like a living line of light along

The dark and lengthen'd coast, and gleam'd at times
Like a white fringing on a sable robe;

An awful coast! from Hartland's iron cliffs

To the black headland and the feudal towers

Of old Tintagel, where renowned Arthur
Sleeps by his native sea; an awful coast!

such the shores of Bude!

He who would see in all its strength reveal'd

The appalling greatness of th' Almighty arm,
Should gaze, dark Bude, upon thy sea, which knows
No parallel in terror and in storm;

He who would marvel at the art and

power

Of man, in wondrous union shown, should stand,

As I have stood, in autumn's stormiest day,