be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that he has any public merit of his own, to keep alive the idea of the services by which his vast landed pensions were obtained. My merits, whatever they are, are original and personal; his, are derivative. It is his ancestor, the original pensioner, that has laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit, which makes his Grace so very delicate and exceptious about the merits of all other grantees of the crown. Had he permitted me to remain in quiet, I should have said: "'Tis his estate; that's enough. It is his by law; what have I to do with it or its history?" He would naturally have said on his side: "'Tis this man's fortune. He is as good now as my ancestor was two hundred and fifty years ago. I am a young man with very old pensions; he is an old man with very young pensions-that's all." Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to compare my little merit with that which obtained from the crown those prodigies of profuse donation by which he tramples on the mediocrity of humble and laborious individuals? Since the new grantees have war made on them by the old, and that the word of the sovereign is not to be taken, let us turn our eyes to history, in which great men have always a pleasure in contemplating the heroic origin of their house. The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the grants, was a Mr. Russell, a person of an ancient gentleman's family, raised by being a minion of Henry VIII. As there generally is some resemblance of character to create these relations, the favourite was in all likelihood much such another as his master. The first of these immoderate grants was not taken from the ancient demesne of the crown, but from the recent confiscation of the ancient nobility of the land. The lion having sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcase to the jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food of confiscation, the favourites became fierce and ravenous. This worthy favourite's first grant was from the lay nobility. The second, infinitely improving on the enormity of the first, was from the plunder of the church. In truth, his Grace is somewhat excusable for his dislike to a grant like mine, not only in its quantity, but in its kind so different from his own. Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign; his from Henry VIII. Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person of illustrious rank, or in the pillage of any body of unoffending men; his grants were from the aggregate and consolidated funds of judgments iniquitously legal, and from possessions voluntarily surrendered by the lawful proprietors with the gibbet at their door. The merit of the grantee whom he derives from, was that of being a prompt and greedy instrument of a levelling tyrant, who oppressed all descriptions of his people, but who fell with particular fury on everything that was great and noble. Mine has been in endeavouring to screen every man, in every class, from oppression, and particularly in defending the high and eminent, who in the bad times of confiscating princes, confiscating chief-governors, or confiscating demagogues, are the most exposed to jealousy, avarice, and envy. The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's pensions was in giving his hand to the work, and partaking the spoil with a prince, who plundered a part of the national church of his time and country. Mine was in defending the whole of the national church of my own time and my own country, and the whole of the national churches of all countries, from the principles and the examples which lead to ecclesiastical pillage, thence to a contempt of all prescriptive titles, thence to the pillage of all property, and thence to universal desolation. The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in being a favourite and chief adviser to a prince who left no liberty to his native country. My endeavour was to obtain liberty for the municipal country in which I was born, and for all descriptions and denominations in it. Mine was to support, with unre laxing vigilance, every right, every privilege, every franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer, and more comprehensive country; and not only to preserve those rights in this chief seat of empire, but in every nation, in every land, in every climate, language, and religion in the vast domain that still is under the protection, and the larger that was once under the protection, of the British crown. His founder's merits were by arts in which he served his master and made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness, and depopulation on his country. Mine were under a benevolent prince, in promoting the commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of his kingdom ; in which his majesty shows an eminent example, who even in his amusements is a patriot, and in hours of leisure an improver of his native soil. -Letter to a Noble Lord. made a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatever but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied. But a Disposer, whose power we are little able to resist, and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and-whatever my querulous weakness might suggest-a far better. The storm has gone over me, and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honours; I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth! There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognise the divine justice, and in some degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the Our irritable nature, he submitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbours of his who visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honour in the world. MR. BURKE'S ACCOUNT OF HIS convulsive struggles of SON. HAD it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should have been, according to my mediocrity, and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a family; I should have left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honour, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment, and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, This is the appetite but of a or to any of those whom he traces in his few. It is a luxury; it is a privilege; it line. His Grace very soon would have is an indulgence for those who are at wanted all plausibility in his attack upon their ease. But we are all of us made to that provision which belonged more to shun disgrace, as we are made to shrink mine than to me. He would soon have from pain, and poverty, and disease. It supplied every deficiency, and symme- is an instinct; and under the direction of trised every disproportion. It would not reason, instinct is always in the right. I have been for that successor to resort to live in an inverted order. They who any stagnant wasting reservoir of merit ought to have succeeded me are gone in me, or in any ancestry. He had in before me; they who should have been himself a salient living spring of generous to me as posterity, are in the place of and manly action. Every day he lived, ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation he would have repurchased the bounty of-which ever must subsist in memory— the crown, and ten times more, if ten that act of piety which he would have times more he had received. He was performed to me; I owe it to him to H H show, that he was not descended, as the Duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent. [OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 1728-1774.] THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE SPIDER. WHAT follows is the result of my own observation upon that species of the insect called the house-spider. I perceived, about four years ago, a large spider in one corner of my room, making its web, and though the maid frequently levelled her fatal broom against the labours of the little animal, I had the good fortune then to prevent its destruction, and, I may say, it more than paid me by the entertainment it afforded. In three days the web was with incredible diligence completed; nor could I avoid thinking that the insect seemed to exult in its new abode. It frequently traversed it round, and examined the strength of every part of it, retired into its hole, and came out very frequently. The first enemy, however, it had to encounter, was another and a much larger spider, which, having no web of its own, and having probably exhausted all its stock in former labours of this kind, came to invade the property of its neighbour. Soon, then, a terrible encounter ensued, in which the invader seemed to have the victory, and the laborious spider was obliged to take refuge in its hole. Upon this I perceived the victor using every art to draw the enemy from its stronghold. He seemed to go off, but quickly returned, and when he found all arts vain, began to demolish the new web without mercy. This brought on another battle, and, contrary to my expectations, the laborious spider became conqueror, and fairly killed his antagonist. snare, and struggled hard to get loose. The spider gave it leave to entangle itself as much as possible, but it seemed to be too strong for the cobweb. I must own I was greatly surprised when I saw the spider immediately sally out, and in less than a minute weave a new net round its captive, by which the motion of its wings was stopped, and when it was fairly hampered in this manner, it was seized and dragged into the hole. In this manner it lived, in a precarious state, and nature seemed to have fitted it for such a life; for upon a single fly it subsisted for more than a week. I once put a wasp into the nest, but when the spider came out in order to seize it as usual, upon perceiving what kind of an enemy it had to deal with, it instantly broke all the bands that held it fast, and contributed all that lay in its power to disengage so formidable an antagonist. When the wasp was at liberty, I expected the spider would have set about repairing the breaches that were made in its net; but those, it seems, were irreparable, wherefore the cobweb was now entirely forsaken, and a new one begun, which was completed in the usual time. I had now a mind to try how many cobwebs a single spider could furnish; wherefore I destroyed this, and the insect set about another. When I destroyed the other also, its whole stock seemed entirely exhausted, and it could spin no more. The arts it made use of to support itself, now deprived of its great means of subsistence, were indeed surprising. I have seen it roll up its legs like a ball, and lie motionless for hours together, but cautiously watching all the time; when a fly happened to approach sufficiently near, it would dart out all at once, and often seize its prey. It Of this life, however, it soon began to grow weary, and resolved to invade the possession of some other spider, since it Now then, in peaceable possession of could not make a web of its own. what was justly its own, it waited three formed an attack upon a neighbouring days with the utmost impatience, repair- fortification, with great vigour, and at first ing the breaches of its web, and taking was as vigorously repulsed. Not daunted, no sustenance that I could perceive. At however, with one defeat, in this manner last, however, a large blue fly fell into the ❘ it continued to lay siege to another's web for three days, and at length, having killed an occurrence, in the true spirit of phythe defendant, actually took possession. sico-theology, that the rooks were saying When smaller flies happen to fall into the their prayers; and yet this child was snare, the spider does not sally out at much too young to be aware that the once, but very patiently waits till it is sure Scriptures have said of the Deity, that of them; or upon his immediately ap-"he feedeth the ravens who call upon proaching, the terror of his appearance him."-Natural History of Selborne. might give the captive strength sufficient to get loose; the manner then is to wait patiently till, by ineffectual and impotent struggles, the captive has wasted all its strength, and then he becomes a certain and easy conquest. The insect I am now describing lived three years; every year it changed its skin, and got a new set of legs. I have sometimes plucked off a leg, which grew again in two or three days. At first it dreaded my approach to its web; but at last it became so familiar as to take a fly out of my hand, and upon my touching any part of the web, would immediately leave its hole, prepared either for a defence or an attack.-Animated Nature. [REV. GILBERT WHITE. 1720-1793.] THE ROOKS RETURNING TO THEIR NESTS. THE HOUSE OR CHIMNEY THE house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is, undoubtedly, the first comer of all the British hirundines, and appears in general on or about the thirteenth of April, as I have remarked from many years' observation. Not but now and then a straggler is seen much earlier; and, in particular, when I was a boy I observed a swallow for a whole day together, on a sunny warm Shrove Tuesday; which day could not fall out later than the middle of March, and often happened early in February. It was worth remarking that these birds are seen first about lakes and mill-ponds; and it is also very particular, that if these early visitors happen to find frost and snow, as was the case of the two dreadful diately withdraw for a time,-a circumsprings of 1770 and 1771, they immestance this, much more in favour of hiding than migration; since it is much more probable that a bird should retire return for a week or two only to warmer to its hybernaculum just at hand, than latitudes. THE evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks are curious and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk, they return in long strings from the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by thousands over Selborne-down, where they wheel round in the air, and sport and dive in a playful manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a loud cawing, which, being blended and softened by the distance that we at the village are below them, becomes a confused noise or chid-gether in chimneys, but often within barns and outhouses against the rafters, and so she did in Virgil's time. ing; or rather a pleasing murmur, very engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in hollow echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. When this ceremony is over, with the last gleam of day they retire for the night to the deep beechen woods of Tisted and Ropley. We remember a little girl, who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on such ney-swallow, by no "Antè Garrula quàm tignis nidum suspendat hirundo." In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called ladu swala, the barn swallow. Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe there are no chimneys to houses, except they are English-built: in these countries she constructs her nest in porches, and gateways, and galleries, and open halls. Here and there a bird may affect some odd peculiar place; as we have known a swallow build down the shaft of an old well, through which chalk had been formerly drawn up for the purpose of manure but in general with us the hirundo breeds in chimneys, and loves to haunt those stacks where there is a constant fire, no doubt for the sake of warmth. Not that it can subsist in the immediate shaft where there is a fire; but prefers one adjoining to that of the kitchen, and disregards the perpetual smoke of that funnel, as I have often observed with some degree of wonder. Five or six or more feet down the chimney does this little bird begin to form her nest about the middle of May, which consists, like that of the house-martin, of a crust or shell composed of dirt or mud, mixed with short pieces of straw, to render it tough and permanent; with this difference, that whereas the shell of the martin is nearly hemispheric, that of the swallow is open at the top, and like half a deep dish: this nest is lined with fine grasses and feathers, which are often collected as they float in the air. Wonderful is the address which this adroit bird shows all day long in ascending and descending with security through so no narrow a pass. When hovering over the mouth of the funnel, the vibrations of her wings acting on the confined air occasion a rumbling like thunder. It is not improbable that the dam submits to this inconvenient situation so low in the shaft, in order to secure her broods from rapacious birds, and particularly from owls, which frequently fall down chimneys, perhaps in attempting to get at these nestlings. less bough of some tree, where, sitting in a row, they are attended with great assiduity, and may then be called perchers. In a day or two more they become flyers, but are still unable to take their own food; therefore they play about near the place where the dams are hawking for flies; and when a mouthful is collected, at a certain signal given, the dam and the nestling advance, rising towards each other, and meeting at an angle; the young one all the while uttering such a little quick note of gratitude and complacency, that a person must have paid very little regard to the wonders of nature that has not often remarked this feat. The dam betakes herself immediately to the business of a second brood as soon as she is disengaged from the first; which at once associates with the first broods of house-martins; and with them congregates clustering on sunny roofs, towers, and trees. This hirundo brings out her second brood towards the middle and end of August. All the summer long is the swallow a most instructive pattern of unwearied industry and affection; for, from morning to night, while there is a family to be supported, she spends the whole day in skimming close to the ground, and exerting the most sudden turns and quick evolutions. Avenues and long walks under hedges, and pasture-fields, and mown meadows where cattle graze, are her delight, especially if there are trees interspersed; because in such spots insects most abound. When a fly is taken, a smart snap from her bill is heard, resembling the noise at the shutting of a watchcase; but the motion of the mandibles is too quick for the eye. The swallow lays from four to six The swallow, probably the male bird, is white eggs, dotted with red specks, and the excubitor to house-martins and other brings out her first brood about the last little birds, announcing the approach of week in June, or the first week in July. birds of prey. For, as soon as a hawk The progressive method by which the appears, with a shrill alarming note he young are introduced into life is very calls all the swallows and martins about amusing; first they emerge from the shaft him; who pursue in a body, and buffet with difficulty enough, and often fall and strike their enemy till they have down into the rooms below: for a day driven him from the village, darting down or so they are fed on the chimney-top, from above on his back, and rising in a and then are conducted to the dead leaf-perpendicular line in perfect security. |