udiced to appreciate. Then do the all the chances on that part of the barkings of the flying pointer or setter, beat. Or he may act in precisely conthe cracking of the dog-whip, the reso- trary fashion, remaining at heel till, on nant imprecations of owner and keeper, being urged more or less forcibly to and the whirring of startled birds, com- hunt for the game, he goes off in most bine in a mélange of melody that makes perfunctory fashion, and disappears in "the copses ring." Perhaps, again, the covert, returning thence after a the deceptive dog prefers a policy of long interval with open mouth and masterly inactivity, and keeps stolidly lolling tongue, and a generally idiotic at heel, or, on being urged to range in aspect. Or, again, he begins in workfront, merely lies down, and, to use a manlike style after a running bird classicism, "chucks it up."

but, on a rabbit crossing his path, Of the retriever as the fashionable starts off on a cheery chase, forgetting dog of the day much might be written. his errand, and usually runs through a A really good one, in the highest sense coppice or two, putting up everything of the word, is rare indeed. Nascitur before he returns-if he returns at all, non fit. Many showy animals are in- for he is sometimes wise enough to ferior to an ugly mongrel of genius, sneak homewards after his expedition. which, with practice, becomes invalu- Then, as a variety, he may develop too able. The deceptive retriever is often much energy, may duly retrieve his of the handsomest and stateliest till bird, and, having got it, proceed to the arduous work begins. Then has mangle it, as if he were employed as a he many pretty little characteristics, of mincing machine. Or he may retrieve which, at any rate, it may be said that very nicely up to a certain point, and they are all admirable tests of philo- then drop his bird, say, on the other sophic patience, usually with the same side of a stream, and come contentedly result as that of the toothache. What empty-mouthed up to his beloved masdoes he do? What doesn't he do? ter. But, indeed, the freaks of deCommonly he bolts off, on the gun be- ceptive dogs are as innumerable as ing fired, without orders, nor checks the flowers that surround them when his wild career till he has spoiled bought in spring.

A JACK-SNIPE IN THE CITY. - During the severe frost at the beginning of 1894 flocks of sea-birds left the sea-board as usual and found their way up the Thames. It is not easy to understand why the seabirds leave the shores where the waters are rarely frozen, to resort to waters which are apt to be frozen. Mr. F. Digby Pigott, whose letters in the Times show him to be an intelligent observer, says that he saw cormorants, herons, pochards, widgeon, swans, ducks, and noisy geese, many in sorts," crowding round the one black opening in the snow-covered ice in the ornamental water in St. James's Park.

But a stranger sight was witnessed on January 8, when Mr. Pigott saw a jacksnipe, caught on the previous Saturday (January 6) in the courtyard of the Bank of England.

The watchman was going his night round at about eleven, when the bird fluttered to the ground beside him. It had evidently flown against the telegraph wires, as the upper mandible was nearly cut through at the base, but was otherwise uninjured, though a breast-bone, which felt through the feathers like the back of a knife, told a tale of frozen marshes and scant provisions.

The common snipe (Scolopax gallina) has been not unfrequently noticed in one or other of the parks. We are not aware of any earlier record of the smaller and less common” jack-snipe (Scolopax gallinula)

Half-starved larks and finches in unusual numbers have been hanging about disconsolately, and black-headed gulls by scores, and in lesser numbers herring gulls, have come in from the river with the punctuality of beggars to the convent gate for the daily as a London bird. dole of fish served out by their almoner from the keeper's lodge.

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brief and perfunctory paragraphs they FRANCIS PARKMAN AND HIS WORK. take us over the Alleghanies in such WHEN in the autumn of 1893 Francis fashion as we might negotiate the Parkman was gathered to his fathers, Brighton Downs, while the glories of who for many generations have been Lake George and the majesty of the conspicuous in New English annals, St. Lawrence are reduced to geographhis countrymen pronounced with no ical expressions. Fenimore Cooper uncertain voice the nature of their loss. has, no doubt, helped in great measure It is doubtful if the author of "Mont- to lighten our darkness, but Francis calm and Wolfe" has been justly ap- Parkman is the first historian who has preciated upon this side of the Atlantic. seriously undertaken the story of the There still exists, I fancy, a vague idea great fight for America between the that transatlantic subjects can hardly Saxon and the Gaul, and to him every by their nature attain to the dignity Saxon, and indeed every Gaul, owes a of history of the first class. It is a great debt. Indeed, the Frenchman. curious and unaccountable prejudice. owes perhaps the greater one, for it Wars which had scarcely any result is amid the French camps and forts but the exhaustion of the combatants, and villages that Mr. Parkman chiefly and no motive but the ambition of a leads us. And if he has to close his king or the spite of a concubine, com- long work with the downfall of New mand much greater notice. And yet France, he leaves us with a respect for even in detail what uneventful reading the gallantry of our vanquished foe is a futile campaign in Flanders com- that should satisfy the most exacting pared with that dramatic struggle be- even of Frenchmen. tween the French and English in the Apart from the literary and historical forests of America which changed the merit of these volumes, there is andestinies of the world. It is not too other reason that will help to secure much to say that Mr. Parkman has them undisputed position as the clasmade the story of this momentous con- sics of this period. Two of the types test his own, and devoted to it practi- which figure conspicuously in these cally his entire life. Famous historians, wars, the Indian and the backwoodsboth English and American, have of man, are upon the verge of extinction. course handled the subject in the To the next generation they will be but Course of their work, but always, it has legends. Mr. Parkman came in time seemed to us, in a perfunctory and life- to study them, to live among them, and less manner. No attempt has ever to know them as they were in his been made to put breath into the va- younger days, shifted westward it is red hosts that joined issue for the true, but not materially altered from Teat stake, or to paint the sombre for- their ancestors who butchered one sts and the silent lakes that echoed another on the banks of the Ohio a with the roar of their half-forgotten hundred years before. battles. In the ordinary historical

Francis Parkman, as has been althis period there always ready indicated, belonged to a family sems a consciousness on the part of distinguished in the annals of New the author that he is dealing with types England for several generations. He hat he cannot attempt to portray, and was born in 1823, and after graduating ith battle-fields of a kind that are be- at Harvard began at once and of set yond the common experience of mili- purpose to fit himself for the work to ary history. The ability to bring back which most of his life was devoted. A in detail these old campaigns out of the period of travel in Europe, which invanished woodlands, and to put life cluded a long sojourn in the Jesuit ain into the men who fought them, College at Rome, was the first step. naturally, perhaps, outside the scope This was followed by a journey on of the eminent writers at whose feet horseback across the continent to Orewe have been accustomed to sit. In gon, a hazardous performance in 1846,

and by a season spent in the wigwams | his home and sent him once more on of the western Indians. The latter his travels, which the improved state was an invaluable experience to a man of his health now made possible. with such an object as Parkman's. He Henceforth, however, his journeys was in any case fond of wild sports, a were all directed to Europe, for he good shot, and a bold horseman. A now felt able to take up again that few good sportsmen have had ready labor of love which he had looked on and skilful pens; a few great authors as the work of his life. With perhave had some fondness for the milder fected and extended plans for purforms of sport; but it is rare indeed to suing this he visited, both now and find all the unflagging industry, the ac- many times during its accomplishcuracy, and the fine literary balance of ment, England, France, and Spain in the student in a man who is perfectly search of the materials which formed at home on an unbroken horse, and the basis of his many volumes. These can face without flinching the charge of were produced at fairly regular intera wounded buffalo. vals, "The Pioneers of France in the As a matter of fact, however, these New World," "The Jesuits in North early adventures of Parkman, while America in the Seventeenth Century,' they inspired his pages, ruined his con- "The Discovery of the Great West, stitution, and made him something of "The Old Régime in Canada," an invalid for life. That he reached"Count Frontenac and New France,' the allotted span of threescore years "Montcalm and Wolfe," being puband ten, and was thus enabled to finish | lished in the order named. Lastly, a his work, should be a cause of thank-year before his death, the gap still refulness to those who have benefited by maining between the year 1700 and the it, and is one of those many instances Peace of Aix la Chapelle was filled in of an ailing body sustained beyond ex-by “A Half Century of Conflict." pectation by an active and vigorous

intellect.

The social and political condition of "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," pub- the English colonies in America, though lished when the author was twenty- not much considered upon this side of eight years old, was written under the Atlantic, has been tolerably well physical infirmities that would have elaborated on the other. Provincial overborne many a man whose pen histories have been abundant everywas his livelihood. And this incentive where, rich in detail and almost always to industry in Parkman's case was more picturesque than accurate. Of wanting. "For three years at this recent years authors of another calibre time," he tells us, "the light of day have been hard at work sweeping away was insupportable; " and the work of the wealth of legend in which the accollecting, reading, and sifting the doc- tual doings of Cavaliers and Puritans, umentary evidence gathered from the Huguenots and Dutchmen, Frenchmen public offices of Europe and America, and Indians were enshrouded, and givand from other sources, amounting to ing to Americans a more accurate picmany thousand pages of manuscript, ture of their fathers. was done wholly by the aid of an It is not necessary, in order to appreamanuensis. For many years after ciate Mr. Parkman's fascinating story this the state of his health precluded of their struggles with their French all idea of serious work, and he lived rivals in Canada, to have at one's finat his country house near Boston, de-gers' ends the condition of the thirteen voting himself to floriculture so suc-jarring commonwealths that lay upon cessfully that he achieved the highest the Atlantic coast in 1750. Indeed, the honors as an amateur gardener, and even wrote a book on roses and lectured at Harvard on similar subjects. The death of his wife in 1858 broke up

utter dislocation of the British system beyond the sea, if system it can be called, reveals itself sufficiently when brought face to face by Mr. Parkman