Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 359, September 1845

"The people!" exclaimed the Spaniard, in a tone of superb defiance.

"Still – powerful as a united people are – before you can call upon a British government to embark in such a contest, it must be shown that the people are capable of acting together; that they are not separated by the jealousies which proverbially divide your country."

"Señor Inglese," said the Don, with a Cervantic curl of the lip, "I see, that Spain has not been neglected among the studies of your high station. But Spain is not to be studied in books. She is not to be sketched, like a fragment of a Moorish castle, and carried off in a portfolio. Europe knows nothing of her. You must pass the Pyrenees to conceive her existence. She lives on principles totally distinct from those of all other nations; and France will shortly find, that she never made a greater mistake than when she thought, that even the southern slope of the Pyrenees was like the northern."

"But," said I, "the disunion of your provinces, the extinction of your army, and the capture of your executive government, must leave the country naked to invasion. The contest may be gallant, but the hazard must be formidable. To sustain a war against the disciplined troops of France, and the daring determination of its ruler, would require a new age of miracle." The Spaniard bit his lip, and was silent. "At all events, your proposals do honour to the spirit of your country, and I shall not be the man to throw obstacles in your way. Draw up a memoir; state your means, your objects and your intentions, distinctly; and I shall lay it before the government without delay."

"Señor Inglese, it shall be done. In that memoir, I shall simply say that Spain has six ranges of mountains, all impregnable, and that the Spanish people are resolved to defend them; that the country is one vast natural fortress; that the Spanish soldier can sleep on the sand, can live on the simplest food, and the smallest quantity of that food; that he can march fifty miles a-day; that he is of the same blood as the conquerors of the Moors, and with the soldiers of Charles V.; and that he requires only discipline and leaders to equal the glory of his forefathers." His fine features glanced with manly exultation.

"Still, before I can bring your case before the country, we must be enabled to have an answer for the objections of the legislature. Your provinces are scarcely less hostile to each other than they are to the enemy. What plan can unite them in one system of defence? and, without that union, how can resistance be effectual?"

"Spain stands alone," was the reply. "Her manners, her feelings, and her people, have no examples in Europe. Her war will have as little similarity to the wars of its governments. It will be a war, not of armies, but of the shepherd, of the artificer, the muleteer, the contrabandist – a war of all classes the peasant, the priest, the noble, nay, the beggar on the highway. But this was the war of her ancestors, the war of the Asturias, which cleared the country of the Moors, and will clear it of the French. All Spain a mass of hostility, a living tide of unquenchable hatred and consuming fire – the French battalions, pouring over the Pyrenees, will be like battalions poured into the ocean. They will be engulfed; they will never return. Our provinces are divided, but they have one invincible bond – abhorrence of the French. Even their division is not infirmity, but strength. They know so little of each other that even the conquest of one half of Spain would be scarcely felt by the rest. This will be a supreme advantage in the species of war which we contemplate – a war of desultory but perpetual assaults, of hostilities that cease neither night nor day, of campaigns that know no distinction between summer and winter – a war in which no pitched battles will be fought, but in which every wall will be a rampart, every hollow of the hills a camp, every mountain a citadel, every roadside, and swamp, and rivulet, the place of an ambuscade. We shall have no battalions and brigades, we require no tactics; our sole science will be, to kill the enemy wherever he can be reached by bullet or knife, until we make Spain the tomb of invasion, and her very name an omen, and a ruin to the tyrant on the French throne."

The councils of England in the crisis were worthy of her ancient name. It was resolved to forget the long injuries of which Spain had been the instrument, during her passive submission to the arrogance of her ally and master. The Bourbons were now gone; the nation was disencumbered of that government of chamberlains, maids of honour, and duennas. It was to be no longer stifled in the perfumed atmosphere of court boudoirs, or to be chilled in the damps of the cloister. Its natural and noble proportions were to be left unfettered and undisguised by the formal fashions of past centuries of grave frivolity and decorous degradation. The giant was to rise refreshed. The Samson was to resume his primal purpose; he was no longer to sleep in the lap of his Delilah; the national fame was before him, and, breaking his manacles at one bold effort, he was thenceforth to stand, as nature had moulded him, powerful and prominent among mankind.

These were dreams, but they were high-toned and healthy dreams – the anticipations of a great country accustomed to the possession of freedom, and expecting to plant national regeneration wherever it set foot upon the soil. The cause of Spain was universally adopted by the people and was welcomed by Parliament with acclamation; the appointment of a minister to represent the cabinet in Spain was decided on, and this distinguished commission was pressed upon my personal sense of duty by the sovereign. My official rank placed me above ambassadorships, but a service of this order had a superior purpose. It was a mission of the country, not of the minister. I was to be the instrument of an imperial declaration of good-will, interest, and alliance to a whole people.

In another week, the frigate which conveyed me was flying before the breeze, along the iron-bound shore of Galicia; the brightest and most burning of skies was over my head, the most billowy of seas was dashing and foaming round me, and my eye was in continual admiration of the noble mountain barriers which, in a thousand shapes, guard the western coast of Spain from the ocean. At length the bay of Corunna opened before us; our anchor dropped, and I made my first step on the most picturesque shore, and among the most original people, of Europe. My destination was Madrid; but it was essential that I should ascertain all the facts in my power from the various provincial governments as I passed along; and I thus obtained a more ample knowledge of the people than could have fallen to the lot of the ordinary traveller. I consulted with their juntas, I was present at their festivals, I rode with their hidalgos, and I marched with their troops. One of the peculiarities which, as an Englishman, has always interested me in foreign travel is, that it brings us back to a period different from the existing age at home. All descending from a common stock, every nation of Europe has made a certain advance; but the advance has been of different degrees. Five hundred years ago, they were all nearly alike. In the Netherlands, I continually felt myself carried back to the days of the Protectorate; I saw nearly the same costume, the same formality of address, and the same habits of domestic life. In Germany, I went back a century further, and saw the English primitive style of existence, the same stiff architecture, the same mingling of stateliness and simplicity, not forgetting the same homage to the "divine right of kings." In Spain, I found myself in the thirteenth century, and but for the language, the heat, and the brown visages around me, could have imagined myself in England, in the days when "barons bold" still exercised the rights of feudalism, when gallant archers killed the king's deer without the king's permission, and when the priest was the lawgiver of the land.

Day by day, I saw the pilgrim making his weary way from shrine to shrine; the landowner caracoling his handsome horse over wild heaths and half-made highways – that horse caparisoned with as many fantastic trappings as the charger of chivalry, and both horse and rider forming no feeble representation of the knight bound on adventure. I saw the monastery of our old times, exhibiting all its ancient solidity, sternness, and pomp; with its hundred brethren; its crowd of sallow, silent domestics; its solemn service; and even with its beggars crowding and quarreling for their daily dole at its gate. The face of the country seemed to have been unchanged since the first invasion of the Visigoths: – immense commons, grown barren from the absence of all cultivation; vast, dreary sheep-walks; villages, few, rude, and thinly peopled; the absence of all enclosures, and a general look of loneliness, which, however, I could have scarcely imagined in England at any period since the Heptarchy. Yet, those wild wastes were often interspersed with delicious spots; where, after toiling half the day over a desert wild as Arabia, the traveller suddenly stood on the brink of some sweet and secluded valley, where the eye rested on almost tropical luxuriance – all the shrubs and blossoms which require so much shelter in our rougher climate, flourishing in the open air; hedges of myrtle and jessamine; huge olives, and primeval vines, spreading, in all the prodigality of nature, over the rocks; parasite plants clothing the oaks and elms with drapery of all colours, floating in every breath of wind; and, most delicious of all, in the fiery centre of Spain, streams, cool as ice and clear as crystal, gushing and glancing away through the depths of the valley; sometimes glittering in the sun, then plunging into shade, then winding along, seen by starts, like silver snakes, until they were lost under sheets of copse and foliage, unpruned by the hand of man, and which seemed penetrable only by the bird or the hare.

WATERTON'S SECOND SERIES OF ESSAYS.[8 - Essays on Natural History, chiefly Ornithology. By Charles Waterton, Esq., author of "Wanderings in South America." Second Series; with a continuation of the Autobiography of the Author.]

At the conclusion of the autobiography prefixed to his former series of Essays, published some years since, Mr Waterton announced that he then "put away the pen not to be used again except in self-defence." That this resolution has been departed from, from whatever motive, will be matter for congratulation to most, if not all, of the readers of the "Wanderings" and "Essays;" and the volume before us derives an additional interest from its being an unsolicited donation to the widow of his deceased friend, Mr Loudon, the well-known naturalist. Methinks the author would not have done amiss in continuing, both to this and the former series of essays, the peculiarly appropriate title under which his first lucubrations were given to the world: since veritable Wanderings they are over every imaginable variety of subject and climate, from caymans in the Essequibo to the blood of St Januarius at Naples; schemes for the banishment of Hanoverian rats (Mr W. never allows this voracious intruder a British denizenship) in Yorkshire, and for averting the projected banishment of the rooks in Scotland. Among the amusing omniun gatherum intermingled with the valuable ornithological information in the present volume, we find dissertations on the gigantic raspberries, now, alas! no more produced in the ruined garden of Walton Hall – on the evils of tight shoes, tight lacing, and stiff cravats – on the natural history of that extinct-by-law variety of the human species called the chimney sweeper – and last, not least, on that of the author himself, in the continuation of his unique autobiography; and we rejoice to find him, though now close upon his grand climacteric, still able to climb a tree by the aid of toes which have never been cramped by tight shoes, with all the vigour, if not all the agility, of his lusty youth, breathing hostility against no living creature except Mr Swainson and Sir Robert Peel – the little love he already bore to the latter for framing the oath of abjuration for Catholics[9 - "'I do hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure any intention to subvert the present Church Establishment within this realm,' &c. In framing that abominable oath, I don't believe that Sir Robert Peel cared one fig's-end whether the soul of a Catholic went up, after death, to the King of Brightness or descended to the King of Brimstone. His only aim seems to have been to secure to the Church by law established the full possession of the loaves and fishes." —Essays, 1st series, p. 19.] not being greatly augmented by the imposition of the income-tax – and still maintaining in Walton Park an inviolable asylum for crows, hawks, owls, and all the generally proscribed tribes of the feathered race.

The continuation of the autobiography is taken up from the publication of the first volume of essays in 1837, and consists chiefly of the narrative of adventures by land and perils by sea, in an expedition with his family, by the route of Holland and the Rhine, to the sunny shores of Italy. But the intervening period was not without incidents worthy of record. By a judicious system of pavement joined with Roman cement, and drains secured at the mouths by iron grates, "Charles Waterton, in the year of grace 1839, effectually cleared the premises at Walton Hall of every Hanoverian rat, young and old … and if I were to offer L.20 sterling money for the capture of a single individual, in or about any part of the premises, not one could be procured." Not long after this memorable achievement, a case of hydrophobia in Nottingham promised to afford him an opportunity of trying the virtues of the famous Wourali poison, as a cure for this dreadful and hitherto unconquerable malady. The difficulties and dangers encountered in the search for this potent narcotic through the wilds of Guiana, and the subsequent experiments on the ass Wouralia, which, after being apparently deprived of life by its influence, was revived by the inflation of the lungs with a blowpipe, and lived twenty-four years in clover at Walton, are familiar to the readers of the Wanderings– but its presumed efficacy in cases of hydrophobia was not destined to be tested in the present instance, as the patient had expired before Mr W.'s arrival. Its powers were, however, exhibited in the presence of a scientific assemblage: – one of two asses operated upon, though restored at the time, died on the third day, the other was perfectly recovered by the process of artificial respiration, and "every person present seemed convinced that the virulence of the Wourali poison was completely under the command of the operator … and that it can be safely applied to a human being labouring under hydrophobia!" Now this inference, with all due deference to Mr Waterton, appears to partake not a little of the non sequitur; and unless the modus operandi by which relief is to be obtained during the suspension of vitality thus produced is more clearly explained, we doubt whether many applications will be made for "the scientific assistance of Mr Gibson of the General Hospital at Nottingham, to give the sufferer a chance of saving his life by the supposed, though yet untried, efficacy of the Wourali poison, which, worst come to the worst, would, by its sedative qualities, render death calm and composed, and free from pain." Satisfied, however, with the somewhat equivocal result of this experiment, Mr Waterton resumed his preparations for departure, and having "called up the gamekeeper, and made him promise, as he valued his place, that he would protect all hawks, crows, herons, jays, and magpies," sailed from Hull for Rotterdam with his two sisters-in-law and his only son, a boy eleven years of age.

Mr Waterton's Catholic sympathies for the Belgian revolt, "for real liberty in religious matters," and his lamentations over the magnificent churches in Holland, stripped of their pictures and ornaments on the change of religion, do not prevent his feeling very favourably disposed towards the Dutch and their country, "the uniformity of which, and the even tenor of their tempers, appear as if one had been made for the other." The protection extended to the stork, which builds without fear in the heart of their towns, gives them an additional claim on his good-will; and "would but our country gentlemen put a stop to the indiscriminate slaughter of birds by their ruthless gamekeepers, we should not have to visit Holland to see the true habits of the stork, nor roam through Germany to enjoy the soaring of the kite – a bird once very common in this part of Yorkshire, but now a total stranger to it." The progressive extinction of so many of the larger species of birds once indigenous to England before the progress of drainage and clearing; has long been a subject of regret not only to the naturalist but the sportsman. Of the stately bustard, once the ornament of all our downs, scarce a solitary straggler now remains – the crane, as well as the stork, which once abounded in the fen districts, has totally disappeared; and though the success which has attended the attempts to re-introduce the capercailzie in Scotland has restored to us one of our lost species, it is much to be feared that unless Mr Waterton's example, in converting his park into a sanctuary, be followed by other country gentlemen of ornithological tastes, the raven, the crow, and the larger species of hawks, in whose preservation no one is interested, and which are already becoming raræ aves, in the agricultural districts, will eventually disappear from the British Fauna.

The great influx of English into Belgium, while scarce any are to be found in Holland, is attributed, probably with reason, to the national love of sight-seeing, which finds gratification in the ceremonies and decorations of the Belgian churches – "up and down which crowds of English are for ever sauntering… 'How have you got over your time to-day?' I said one afternoon to an acquaintance, who, like Mr Noddy's eldest son in Sterne, was travelling through Europe at a prodigious speed, and had very little spare time on his hands. He said he had knocked off thirteen churches that morning!" The headquarters of the English residents appear to be at Bruges, and Mr Waterton highly approves of the selection: – "Did my habits allow me to prefer streets to woods and green fields, I could retire to Bruges, and there end my days." But after visiting the convent of English nuns, where some of the ladies of Mr Waterton's family had received their education, and the portrait of "that regal profligate, Charles II." (Mr Waterton's love of truth here gets the better of his ancestral predilections for the house of Stuart) in the hall of the ancient society of archers, of which he was a member during his exile, the travellers continued their route by Ghent and along the valley of the Meuse, "which, on a fine warm day in July, appears as rich and beautiful as any valley can well be on this side of ancient Paradise," to Aix-la-Chapelle. At this famous Prussian watering-place Mr Waterton found much to move his bile, not only in the sight of ladies risking their fortunes at the public gaming-tables authorised and protected by government, but in the folly of the valetudinarians, who perversely counteract the beneficial effects of the waters by "resorting to the salle-à-manger, and there partaking of all the luxuries from the cornucopia of Epicurus, Bacchus, and Ceres." He derived some consolation, however, from the contemplation of the magnificent and varied prospect from the wooded heights of the Louisberg above the town; and the sight, on his last visit, of a pair of ravens circling over his head in aërial revolutions, and then winging their way towards the forest of Ardennes, awakened recollections of home, and "of the rascally cobbler who desecrated the Sunday morning by robbing the last raven's nest in this vicinity." At Freyburg they encountered a phenomenon, in the shape of a poetical German waiter – and a poet, too, in the English language, though he had never been in England, nor much among English; but the waiter's effusions, the subject of which was the cathedral of Freyburg, were never destined to reach England, but now lie, with the rest of Mr Waterton's travelling goods and chattels, in the wreck of the Pollux, at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea.

The passage of the Alps disappointed our traveller's hopes of finding among their heights some of the rarer European birds: – "the earth appeared one huge barren waste, and the heavens produced not a single inhabitant of air." On descending the southern side of the mountains, they at length received ocular demonstration of their being really in Italy, by observing matronly-looking woman engaged in certain offices touching the long black hair of her daughter, which showed that combs were still as scarce as when Horace stigmatized the "incomptum caput" of Canidia; and the necessity of lavender water, to pass with any thing like comfort through the town and villages which looked so enchanting at a distance in the midst of their olive groves and cypresses, is feelingly commented upon. But before entering Rome, we must give Mr Waterton's own account of an exploit which made some noise at the time of its performance, and the motives at least of which appear to have been mis-stated. On a former visit, he had gained great renown by climbing, in company with Captain Alexander of the royal navy, to the summit of the cross surmounting the ball of St Peter's, and leaving his gloves on the point of the conductor! and as a pendant to this notable achievement, it was announced about this time, in most of the English papers, that in a fervour of religious enthusiasm, on approaching the Eternal City, he had walked barefoot as a pilgrim the last twenty miles, and thus so severely lacerated his feet as to be incapable for some time of moving. "Would that my motives had been as pure as represented! The sanctity of the churches, the remains of holy martyrs which enrich them, the relics of canonized saints placed in such profusion throughout them, might well induce a Catholic traveller to adopt this easy and simple mode of showing his religious feeling. But, unfortunately, the idea never entered my mind at the time; I had no other motives than those of easy walking and self-enjoyment." The enjoyment to be derived from walking without shoes or stockings over a rough pavement, in sharp frost, proved as problematical in practice as it would be to most persons in theory; and Mr Waterton found to his cost, that the fifteen years which had elapsed since he went barefoot with impunity in the forests of Guiana, had materially impaired his soles' power of endurance. After sustaining a severe injury in his right foot, of which the intensity of the cold prevented his being sensible at the instant, he was glad to resume his chaussure, and was laid up on the sofa for two months after his arrival. "It was this unfortunate adventure which gave rise to the story of my walking barefooted into Rome, and which gained me a reputation by no means merited on my part."

Notwithstanding this mishap, and the many things offensive to English feelings in the manifold impurities of Roman streets and kitchens, Mr Waterton speaks with much satisfaction of his sojourn for several months in "Rome, immortal Rome, replete with every thing that can instruct and please." Though his former visits had in great degree satiated him with galleries and palaces, he still found great attractions in the studio of the Roman Landseer, Vallati,[10 - A long-protracted lawsuit between this artist and Prince Giustiniani has since attracted much public notice. On cleaning a painting apparently of little value, which he had purchased at a sale of the refuse of the prince's gallery, Signor Vallati detected traces of a superior production beneath that painted over it, on removing which, the long-lost duplicate of Correggio's Reading Magdalen was brought to light. A claim was now set up by Prince Giustiniani for the restitution of the picture, or payment of its full value: – but the cause, after being carried from one tribunal to another, was at last decided in favour of the right of Vallati to his prize.] the famous painter of wild-boars; but his great point of attraction seems to have been the bird-market near the Pantheon – the extent of traffic in which may be judged from the statement, that during the spring and autumn passage of the quails, which are taken in nets of prodigious extent on the shores of the Mediterranean, 17,000 of these birds have passed the Roman custom-house in one day. The catalogue of birds exposed for sale as articles of food comprehends nearly all the species found in Italy: not even robin-redbreast is sacred from the omnivorous maw of the Italian gourmand, and a hundred at a time may be seen lying on a stall. "The birdmen outwardly had the appearance of banditti, but it as all outside, and nothing more: they were good men notwithstanding their uncouth looks, and good Christians too, for I could see them waiting at the door of the Jesuits' church by half-past four on a winter's morning, to be ready for the first mass." By ingratiating himself with this rough-seeming fraternity, Mr Waterton succeeded in obtaining specimens of many rare birds, which fortunately escaped the wreck of the Pollux, by having been previously forwarded to Leghorn. Among these scattered ornithological notices, we find some interesting remarks on the true designation of the "sparrow sitting alone upon the house-top," to which the Royal Psalmist likened himself in his penitence and vigils. It is obvious that the description could not apply to our common house sparrow, the habits of which are certainly the reverse of solitary or pensive; and Mr Waterton is undoubtedly correct in referring it to the Blue or Solitary Thrush – a bird not found in this country, but common in Spain, Italy, and the south of France, and still more so in the Levant – the Petrocincla cyanea of scientific naturalists, and the Passera solitaria of the Italians. "It is a real thrush in size, in shape, in habits, and in song – and is indeed a solitary bird, for it never associates with any other, and only with its own mate in breeding time – and even then it is often seen quite alone upon the house-top, where it warbles in sweet and plaintive strains, and continues its song as it moves in easy flight from roof to roof. The traveller may often see it on the remains of the Temple of Peace, but much more frequently on the stupendous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, and always on the Colosseum: and, in fine, on the tops of most of the churches, monasteries, and convents, within and without the walls of the Eternal City. It being an assiduous frequenter of the habitations of man, I cannot have a doubt that it was the same bird which King David saw on the house-top before him, and to which he listened as it poured forth its sweet and plaintive song."

The ceremonies of St Anthony's Day, when the beasts of burden, decked in many-coloured trappings, are brought to receive the priestly benediction, are described with much unction, and defended with Mr Waterton's usual zeal for the ordinances of his church, and with considerable tact, against the ridicule often thrown upon them by "thoughtless and censorious travellers." "I recalled to my mind the incessant and horrible curses which our village urchins vent against their horses on the Barnsley canal, which passes close by my porters' lodges" – and truly the most rigid of Protestants could scarcely deny, in this case, the advantage, for the well-doing of both man and beast, which the usages of Rome have over those of Yorkshire. But the approach of the malaria season at length compelled them to leave Rome for Naples; and on the journey Mr Waterton's ornithological tastes were gratified to the utmost. "I saw more birds than I had seen on the whole of the journey from England; and after having seen the ram of Apulia, I no longer considered Homer's story of Ulysses with the sheep of Polyphemus as so very much out of the way." But a still more imposing spectacle than the festival of St Anthony awaited them at Naples: this was the liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius, on September 19, to witness which was the principal object of their visit. We shall leave Mr Waterton to speak for himself. "At the termination of high mass, the phial containing the blood was carried by one of the canons into the body of the cathedral, that every person might have an opportunity of inspecting the blood, and kissing the phial, should he feel inclined. There were two phials – a large one, containing the blood as it had flowed from the wounds of the martyr at its execution; and a smaller one, containing his blood mixed with sand, just as it had been taken from the ground on which it had fallen. These two phials were enclosed in a very strong and beautifully ornamented case of silver and glass. I kissed this case, and had a most satisfactory opportunity of seeing the blood in its solid state… and the canon who held it turned it over and over many times to prove to us that the blood was not liquid… At one o'clock P.M., no symptoms whatever of a change had occurred. A vast number of people had already left the cathedral, so that I found the temperature considerably lowered. Precisely at a quarter before two, the blood suddenly and entirely liquefied. The canon who held the case passed close by me, and afforded me a most favourable opportunity of accompanying him close up to the high altar, where I kissed the phial, and joined my humble prayers to those of the multitude… Nothing in the whole course of my life has struck me so forcibly as this occurrence;… and I here state, in the most unqualified manner, my firm conviction, that the liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius is miraculous, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Were I to conceal this my conviction from the public eye, I should question the soundness of both my head and my heart, and charge my pen with arrant cowardice."

After a short excursion to Sicily, in which Mr Waterton had occasion to surmise that the ancient furies of Scylla and Charybdis had quitted their old quarters to take up their abode in the passport-offices, and regretted his inability to avail himself of the opportunities which the island afforded, for observing the spring and autumn passage of the migratory birds, they paid a farewell visit to the tomb of Virgil, and left "that laughing, noisy, merry city of Naples on a fine and sunny morning, to enjoy for eight or nine months more the soothing quiet of the Roman capital." At length, on the 16th June 1841, the party left Rome, and sailed the next day from Civita Vecchia, on board the Pollux steamer, for Leghorn; but their good fortune at length deserted them. "Cervantes has told us that there is nothing certain in this life – 'no hay cosa segura en esta vida.'" It was soon evident to Mr Waterton, as an old traveller, that there was a great want of nautical discipline on board the Pollux, and of this they soon had fatal proof. In the midst of the night the vessel came in collision with the Mongibello, a steamer of larger size, steering on the opposite course, which stove her in amidships, and she sunk in a quarter of an hour. The captains and mates of both vessels were asleep below, but from the calmness of the sea, and the exertions of the Prince of Canino (Charles Bonaparte,) who was fortunately a passenger on board the Mongibello, and took the helm from the steersman when he was on the point of sheering off from the wreck, all the crew and passengers of the Pollux, except one man, were got safe on board the former vessel. All their property was lost, and, on their being landed the next day at Leghorn, an attempt was made by the authorities to detain the vessel, and all on board, for twenty days in quarantine, on the ground of the Pollux's bill of health having been lost in the foundered vessel! But Prince Canino again came to the rescue, and they eventually returned in the Mongibello to Civita Vecchia, and thence to Rome, where, as a climax to their misfortunes, Mr Waterton was for some time laid up by an attack of fever. It was not till the 20th of July that he finally set out with his party for England, having in the mean time made a singular addition to his suite, which is treated of at length in one of the Essays.

Among the various strange birds which find a place in the Roman bill of fare, is a pretty little owl yclept the Civetta, (called by British ornithologists, from its diminutive size, the passerina, or sparrow owl,) which abounds throughout Italy, where it figures in more varied capacities than is consistent with the usually reserved habits of its race. "You may see it plucked and ready trussed for the spit, on the same stall at which hawks, crows, jackdaws, jays, magpies, hedgehogs, frogs, snails, and buzzards, are offered for sale to the passing conoscenti" – a catalogue of dainties which bears but a small proportion to a more extended carte raisonnée elsewhere given by Mr Waterton, who verily believes that "scarcely any thing which has had life in it comes amiss to the Italians in the way of food, except the Hanoverian rat." It is used by sportsmen (as we find from Savi's Ornitologia Toscana) as a decoy for small birds, which it attracts within gunshot by its singular gestures when placed on the top of a pole; and it "is much prized by the gardener, for its uncommon ability in destroying insects, snails, slugs, and reptiles. There is scarcely an outhouse in the vineyards and gardens which is not tenanted by the Civetta, and it is often brought up tame from the nest." It has hitherto been known in England only as a rare and accidental visitor; and Mr Waterton, actuated by a patriotic desire to secure for his countrymen the benefit of its services – "not, by the way, in the kitchen, but in the kitchen-garden" – provided himself with a dozen as compagnons de voyage, on quitting Rome. At Genoa, an inclination was manifested by the custom-house officers to claim duty on this novel article of export – and a precedent might have been drawn from the case of the eagles which were sent from Killarney to Colonel Montagu, before the duties between England and Ireland were abolished, and detained at Bristol on the plea that there was a duty on all singing-birds! The Genoese doganieri, however, on Mr Waterton's assurance that the owls were not for the purposes of traffic, and were, moreover, the native produce of la bellissima Italia, (with the sly addition, that he "had reason to believe they are common in Genoa, so that they can well be spared,") graciously allowed them to pass duty-free; but at Basle an unexpected obstacle arose. Mr Waterton's letter of credit had been lost in the Pollux; and in spite of letters of recommendation from the Prince of Canino, and the Italian Rothschild, Torlonia, "M. Passavant the banker, a wormwood-looking money-monger, refused to advance a single sous," even on the deposit of a valuable watch; and Mr Waterton, with his owls and his family, would have stuck fast at Basle, but for the arrival of Mr W. Brougham, (brother of Lord Brougham,) who furnished him with a supply; and the whole party reached Aix-la-Chapelle safe and sound. But here Mr Waterton thought proper, by way of cleansing his protegés from the soils of their long journey, to give them, as well as himself, the benefit of a warm bath! – "an act of rashness" (as he himself terms it) which caused the death of five of the number from cold the same night. Two others perished afterwards from casualties, and the remaining five arrived safe at Walton Hall. "On the 10th of May 1842, there being abundance of slugs, snails, and beetles on the ground, at seven o'clock in the evening, the weather being serene and warm, I opened the door of the cage, and the five owls stepped out to try their fortunes in this wicked world. As they retired into the adjacent thicket, I bade then be of good heart; and although the whole world was now open to them, I said if they would stop in my park I would be glad of their company, and would always be a friend and benefactor to them." How the little strangers have sped – whether they have increased and multiplied in the hospitable shades of Walton Hall, to gratify their entomological tastes for the benefit of neighbouring kitchen-gardens, or strayed from this asylum, and fallen victims as raræ aves to some ruthless bird-stuffer, we hope to be informed in the "more last words" which we yet hope for on the pen of Mr Waterton.

"Of all the brave birds that e'er I did see,
The owl is the fairest in her degree,"

quoth an old ditty; and we must ourselves confess to a peculiar penchant for an "owl in an ivy bush," partly from personal sympathy for its shortsightedness, and not less for the aspect of solemn wisdom which gained for it of yore a place on the crest of Minerva's helmet, and has made it, in the regions of the East, the counsellor of kings and princes. Who has not heard of the reproof thus conveyed, through the medium of a vizier skilled in the mystic language of birds, to the devastating ambition of Sultan Mahmood of Ghazni? The gates of whose tomb, (it may be remarked par parenthèse,) the savans have now decided never to have been at Somnat at all – a piece of useful knowledge cheaply acquired, no doubt, at the expense of a war which has secured the owls of that country, for some years to come, against any scarcity of ruined villages wherewith to endow their daughters. We regret, therefore, to find that Mr Waterton, to whom we owe the introduction of the Civetta in England, and who, in the first series of his Essays, has eloquently vindicated the character of the barn-owl against the aspersions alike of the poets of the Augustan age and the old women of the present day, still denies the accomplishment of hooting to the Yorkshire barn-owls, and persists in considering it restricted to the single individual shot by Sir William Jardine. "We know full well that most extraordinary examples of splendid talent do from time to time make their appearance on the world's wide stage – and may we not suppose that the barn-owl which Sir William shot in the absolute act of hooting, may have been a gifted bird of superior parts and knowledge, endowed, perhaps, from its early days with the faculty of hooting, or else taught it by its neighbour the tawny owl? I beg to remark, that though I unhesitatingly grant the faculty of hooting to this one particular individual owl, still I flatly refuse to believe that hooting is common to barn-owls in general." The same denial is repeated in the present volume; but Sir William's owl is no longer alone in his glory, as the possession of a similar talent, to at least a limited extent, has been ascribed in the pages of the Zoologist to the Oxford owls. As Mr Waterton's accuracy as an observer cannot be questioned, we can only infer that the advantages of education enjoyed by the owls of Alma Mater and the Modern Athens, enables them to attain a degree of vocal proficiency beyond the reach of their rustic brethren in Yorkshire – and we hope ere long to hear of Mr Waterton's having added a feathered professor of languages, from one or other of these seats of learning, to the colony of barn-owls established in the ruin of the old gateway at Walton.

Mr Waterton has never been famous for showing too much mercy to his opponents in controversy – and, on the present occasion, the vials of his wrath are poured forth without stint, though certainly not without strong provocation, on the head of Mr Swainson, well known some years since as a writer on natural history, and as one of the principal advocates of the Quinary System[11 - A close analogy, according to this system, existed between pigs and humming-birds – each representing the gliriform type in their respective circles, and resembling each other in their small eyes and suctorial propensities! – See Swainson's Classification of Birds in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia, i. 43.]– a sort of zoological transcendentalism (to borrow a phrase from Kant and his disciples) then fashionable, according to which all the genera and species of animals, known or hereafter to be discovered, were held bound spontaneously to arrange themselves in circular groups of five, neither more nor less, in obedience to some intuitive principle of nature, of which the details were not yet very clearly made out. It would appear that Mr Swainson, who is characterised as a "morbid and presumptuous man," had been at variance – on personal as well as scientific grounds – with Mr Waterton, from whom he received a castigation for his ornithological heresies, in a letter published in 1837; but his retaliation was delayed for two years, when, in an account of the cayman, published in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia, he describes it as "on land a slow-paced, and even timid animal; so that an active boy, armed with a small hatchet, might easily dispatch one. There is no great prowess, therefore, required to ride on the back of a poor cayman after it has been secured, or perhaps wounded; and a modern writer might well have spared the recital of his feats in this way upon the cayman of Guiana, had he not been influenced in this, and numberless other instances, by the greatest possible love of the marvellous, and a constant propensity to dress truth in the garb of fiction;" and subsequently speaks of the cayman as "so timid that, had we been disposed to perform such ridiculous feats, our compassion for the poor animals would have prevented us." Mr Waterton had no opportunity of replying to these offensive imputations at the time they were published, being then absent in Italy, while Mr Swainson was on the point of finally quitting England in order to become a settler in New Zealand. But though thus separated by the entire diameter of the globe, "steam will soon convey to him a copy of this," says Mr Waterton – and verily he has demolished the unlucky Swainson without ruth or mercy. Whether this "wholesale dealer in unsound zoology," as Mr Waterton calls him, ever can have seen a cayman, except at a safe distance, appears somewhat dubious; and his story of this reptile hiding its prey in a hole till semi-putrid, though it would convey a high idea of the respect entertained by his brother caymans for the rights of property, must be incredible to any one who has ever inspected the jaws of the animals which (as Mr Waterton observes) "are completely formed for snatch and swallow." We fear, moreover, that the character which general experience has assigned to these huge reptiles, whether called crocodiles, caymans, or alligators, is much more in accordance with the anecdote related by Governor Ynciarte of a man carried off into the river by one of these monsters from the alameda, or public walk, of Angostura, than with Swainson's description of a timid creature, liable to be knocked on the head by an idle boy with a hatchet, the defenceless state of which excited his compassion. If, therefore, Mr Swainson does not come forward, either to substantiate these novel statements, or to retract them, the scientific world is likely to come to the conclusion drawn by Mr Waterton, that, "when he wrote his account of this reptile, he was either totally unacquainted with its habits and economy, or that he wilfully perverted them, in order to be revenged on me" for the letter above mentioned.

From the circumstances under which the present volume was put forth, one or two letters are included which do not appear to have been originally intended for publication – and these are not the least characteristic parts of the work – as that to Mr Hog of Newliston in advocacy of the persecuted Scotch rooks, and one to Mr Loudon himself on the methods of clearing a garden from vermin, in which there is much practical sense. It is not good for weasels or hedgehogs, any more than for man, to be alone in this world. "You say 'you will send to a gardener in the country for a weasel.' You must send for two, male and female. A bachelor weasel, or a spinster weasel, would not tarry four-and-twenty hours in your garden. Either of them would go a sweet-hearting, and not return. You remark that your 'hedgehogs soon disappeared.' No doubt, unless confined by a wall… A garden, well fenced by a wall high enough to keep dogs out, is a capital place for hedgehogs. But there ought always to be two, man and wife… The windhover (or kestrel) hawk is excellent for killing beetles, and also for consuming slugs and snails; cats dare not attack him, wherefore he is very fit for a garden." We have not heard whether any effect has been produced by Mr Waterton's remonstrances against the edict of extermination fulminated against his sable friends the rooks – but we fear that farmers in all countries are much on a par with those Delaware colonists and Isle of Bourbon planters, whose fate he adduces as a warning. Having destroyed their grakles, on a similar charge to that on which sentence has now been passed on the rooks, they lost their whole crops by insects, and were compelled not only to re-introduce the grakles, but to protect them by law. We trust that the Scotch farmers will not be obliged, by a similar calamity, to avail themselves of Mr Waterton's obliging offer to send them, in case of such necessity, a fresh supply of these "useful and interesting birds."

Mr Waterton never loses an opportunity of showing his contempt for the modern systems of ornithology, which, by their complicated nomenclature, eternally changed by every new sciolist, have almost succeeded in converting that fascinating science into an unintelligible jargon of hard names. "As I am not a convert to the necessity or advantages of giving to many of our British birds these new and jaw-breaking names, I will content myself with the old nomenclature, so well-known to every village lad throughout the country… The ancients called the wren troglodytas; but it is now honoured with the high-sounding name of Anorthura, alleging for a reason, that the ancients were quite mistaken in their supposition that this bird was an inhabitant of caves, as it is never to be seen within them. Methinks that the ancients were quite right, and that our modern masters in ornithology are quite wrong. If we only for a moment reflect that the nest of the wren is spherical, and is of itself, as it were, a little cave, we can easily imagine that the ancients, on seeing the bird going in and out of this artificial cave, considered the word troglodytas an appropriate appellation."

Among the various feathered visitants attracted by the city of refuge provided for them at Walton, were a flock of twenty-four wild-geese, of the large and beautiful species called the Canada or Cravat goose, (from the conspicuous white patch on its black neck,) which unexpectedly appeared on the lake one winter, and took up their permanent abode there, occasionally making excursions to the other waters in the neighbourhood. "In the breeding season, two or three pairs will remain here. The rest take themselves off, and are seen no more till the return of autumn, when they reappear without any addition to the flock or diminution of it. This is much to be wondered at; and I would fain hazard a conjecture that the young may possibly be captured in the place where they have been hatched, and the pinioned to prevent escape. But, after all, this is mere speculation. We know nothing of the habits of our birds of passage when they are absent from us; and we cannot account how it comes to pass that the birds just mentioned invariably return to this country without any perceptible increase of numbers; or, if the original birds die or are destroyed, why it is that the successors arrive here in the same numbers as their predecessors." This remark has before been made in the case of swallows and other migratory birds, the numbers of which returning each spring, in localities where they can be accurately observed and counted, has always been found to be he same as that which arrived the preceding year, though the flock which departed southward in autumn had been swollen by the young broods accompanying their parents. Thus Gilbert White ascertained that at Selborne the number of swifts was invariably eleven pair; and, as in some instances when old birds have been caught and marked, they have been found to return during several succeeding years, this fact would seem to justify the inference that the young birds, after quitting the country of their birth, do not, for at least a year or two, join in the annual migration of their species.

By waylaying the stay-at-home geese at the time when the moult of the wing-quills disabled them for flight, Mr Waterton succeeded in securing and pinioning six of them, thus preventing their future departure. They subsequently received an accession to their party in two Bernacle ganders, which Mr Waterton had brought over from Rotterdam, and the partners of which had died soon after their arrival, perhaps from the act of pinioning them; though Mr Waterton seems more inclined to attribute their untimely end to the stupidity of a Hull custom-house officer, who sent the hamper containing them jolting in a truck without springs over the rough pavement to the custom-house, only to be peremptorily sent back, as not liable to duty, by another of the same genus. "The two ganders, bereft of their connubial comforters, seemed to take their misfortunes sorely to heart for some time, till at last they began to make advances for permission to enter into the company of the Canadian geese. These good birds did not hesitate to receive them; and from that time these two very distinct species of geese (one being only half the size of the other) have become inseparable companions." The confederacy of these distant relations led, however, to some unexpected results, which are related by Mr Waterton with inimitable quaintness. On returning from Italy in the autumn of 1841, he was informed by the keeper that a left-handed marriage had been struck up between one of the little ganders and a pinioned Canadian goose, the produce of which had been five addle eggs. "Had he told me that the income-tax is a blessing, and the national debt an honour to the country, I could more readily have believed him, than that a Canada goose had been fool enough to unite herself to a Bernacle gander. Nevertheless, the man persisted in what he affirmed; and I told the story to others, and nobody believed me." The breeding-season of 1842 proved, however, the truth of the story; but the oddly-matched couple were again disappointed in their hopes of a family – the eggs all proving addle. The third year saw the persevering pair again engaged in incubation: "and nothing could exceed the assiduity with which the little Bernacle stood guard, often on one leg, over his bulky partner. If any body approached the place, his cackling was incessant; he would run at him with the fury of a turkey-cock; he would jump up at his knees, and not desist in his aggressions till the intruder had retired. There was something so remarkably disproportionate betwixt this goose and gander, that I gave to this the name of Mopsus, and to that the name of Nisa:[12 - "Mopso Nisa datur. Quid non speremus amantes?Jungentur jam gryphes equis."Virgil, Eclog. viii. 26.] … the whole affair appeared to me one of ridicule and bad taste; and I was quite prepared for a termination similar to that of the two preceding years, when behold! to my utter astonishment, out came two young ones, the remainder of the five eggs being addle. The vociferous gesticulations and strutting of little Mopsus were beyond endurance when he first caught sight of his long-looked-for progeny. He screamed aloud, whilst Nisa helped him to attack me with their united wings and hissings, as I approached the nest in order to convey the little ones to the water … and this loving couple, apparently so ill-assorted and disproportionate, have brought up the progeny with great care and success. The hybrids are elegantly shaped, but are not so large as the mother nor so small as the father; their plumage partaking in colour with that of both parents… I certainly acted rashly, notwithstanding appearances, in holding this faithful couple up to the ridicule of visitors who accompanied me to the spot. I have had a salutary lesson, and shall be more guarded for the future in giving an opinion. My speculation that a progeny could not be produced from the union of a Bernacle gander with a Canada goose has utterly failed. I stand convinced by a hybrid, reprimanded by a gander, and instructed by a goose."

The melody ascribed to the dying swan has long been well known to exist only in the graceful mythology of the ancients; but as few opportunities occur of witnessing the bird's last moments, some interest attaches to Mr Waterton's personal observations on this point, which we can ourselves corroborate, having not long since been present at the death of a pet swan, which, like Mr Waterton's favourite, had been fed principally by hand; and, instead of seeking to conceal itself at the approach of death, quitted the water, and lay down to die on the lawn before its owner's door. "He then left the water for good and all, and sat down on the margin of the pond. He soon became too weak to support his long neck in an upright position. He nodded, and then tried to recover himself; and then nodded again, and again held up his head: till at last, quite enfeebled and worn out, his head fell gently on the grass, his wings became expanded a trifle or so, and he died while I was looking on… Although I gave no credence to the extravagant notion which antiquity had entertained of melody from the mouth of the dying swan, still I felt anxious to hear some plaintive sound or other, some soft inflection of the voice, which might tend to justify that notion in a small degree. But I was disappointed… He never even uttered his wonted cry, nor so much as a sound, to indicate what he felt within."

Mr Waterton repeats in the present volume the determination which he had expressed in his former Essays, not to appear again before the public as an author: – "It is time to say farewell, and to bid adieu to natural history, as far as the press is concerned." But we still hope that he may again be induced, on returning from Italy, whither we believe he has once more bent his steps, by some other cause than the death of a valued friend, to depart from this resolution. As he himself remarks with truth, in the preface to his first series of Essays, "we can never expect to have a complete history of birds, until he who undertakes the task of writing it shall have studied his subject in the field of nature," – and how little this has been attended to even in the ornithology of our own country, is sufficiently shown by the errors which, till of late, disfigured all the received works on this subject, and have been copied with implicit faith from one soi-disant naturalist by another. Since that kindred spirit Gilbert White, the first English naturalist who studied the habits of living birds in the open air, instead of describing the colours of the plumage of stuffed specimens in cabinets, we have had no one who has investigated the economy of animals, and particularly of that most beautiful class of the animal kingdom, the birds, so thoroughly con amore as Mr Waterton, in this and his preceding publications – identifying himself (it may almost be said) with their feelings and idiosyncrasies, and vindicating them from the aspersions thrown upon them in the writings of closet-naturalists, with the indignant zeal of a champion whose heart and soul is in the cause of injured innocence. Those who saw the sloth exhibited last summer in the Regent's Park Zoological Gardens, when at large and suspended by its huge claws to the under side of a branch of a tree, must have recognised the minute accuracy of Mr Waterton's account, in the Wanderings, of the habits of this animal, so much impugned at the time, because diametrically opposed to the statements of zoologists who had either never seen it alive, or seen it only when placed on a flat surface, a position which it never assumes in its natural state, and which its conformation renders one of extreme pain and constraint. Much animadversion has also been lavished by writers of the same class on Mr Waterton's sketches of British ornithology, as the facilities for observation procured by the security afforded to his protegés, and the unusual degree to which they have been consequently familiarised, have enabled him to overthrow many long-established errors – a thankless task at best, and which in some instances has not been rendered more palatable to those whose blunders were thus exposed, by the unsparing shafts of his raillery. But against all these antagonists Mr Waterton is very well able to defend himself, as the unlucky Mr Swainson and some others of his assailants know to their cost; and wishing him the full fruition for many long years of the bodily activity which enables him still to scale the highest tree in Walton Park to inspect a crow's nest, and not less of that irresistible naïveté and bonhommie which give such enjoyable zest to all his writings, we bid him for the present farewell – and if, in sooth, we are ne'er again to meet the Lord of Walton Hall in print, we scarce "shall look upon his like again!"

WARREN'S LAW STUDIES.[13 - A Popular and Practical Introduction to Law Studies, &c. &c. By Samuel Warren, Esq., F.R.S., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law.]

The readers of Blackwood who, month after month, followed with increasing interest the adventures of Titmouse, and the adversity and restoration of the Aubrey family, will excuse us if we apparently diverge from our usual literary course to track the author of "Ten Thousand a-Year" in a work which he has given to the legal profession, or rather to those who meditate entering upon that profession, or who have just set their foot upon the threshold.

Mr Warren's "Introduction to Law Studies" has already received the approbation of the public, testified by the sale of an unusually large edition. This has prompted the author to fresh endeavours to render it worthy of the peculiar place it fills, and of his own name; and he now, "after ten years of additional experience, (eight of them at the bar,)" publishes a second edition, "remodelled, rewritten, and greatly enlarged" – indeed so considerably altered and amplified as to be, in reality, a new work under the old title.

"In the present work," says the preface, "is incorporated one which the author has for some years meditated offering to the public, viz. an elementary and popular outline of the leading doctrines and practice of each of the three great departments of the law, civil, criminal, and ecclesiastical." The work, therefore, now consists of three distinct parts. 1. A general survey of the legal profession – a description of the nature of its several departments, of the various studies, labours, modes of life, of the conveyancer, the special pleader, the common-law and equity barrister, in order to guide the choice of a young man, who probably has hitherto a very confused notion of what, and how many different things, may be implied in the vague expression of "going to the bar." 2. A concise and elementary view of the several branches of the law which fall to the especial study of these several departments of the profession, as equity, the ecclesiastical and common law; and, 3. the recommendation of a course of study, pointing out the best books on each subject, and adding many useful hints to the young student on the discipline of his mind, and the acquirement of general knowledge.

To us it seems that such a work must be of very great utility, and that Mr Warren has given the most complete "beginning book" that was ever put into the hands of a young person seeking, or entering, a profession. It is not a publication which, as far as we know, replaces or competes with any other, but fills up a vacancy, and supplies a want which must have often been painfully felt. How can a young man, ambitious of entering the bar, know the nature of that profession into which he is so anxious to enlist himself? He goes into a court of justice, and sees men in their grotesque but imposing costume haranguing the judge and the jury, and without further thought he resolves that he too will be an orator and haranguer. Or what is more frequently the case, he reads the published speeches of an Erskine or a Curran, accompanied with memoirs of the men, and accounts of their forensic triumphs, and he burns to achieve the like actions, and to wield the same "resistless eloquence." But who is to tell him the nature of that territory, and by what manner of journey it is to be traversed, which lies between him and the gowned orator he is desirous of emulating? He sees the great actor on the stage, or hears of the intoxicating applause which he wins; but who is to conduct him behind the scenes, show him the apprenticeship he has to pass through, the hazards of failure, the impatience and tedium of unemployed energies – "the sad seclusion of unfrequented chambers, or the sadder seclusion of crowded courts?"[14 - P. 71.] How invaluable, at such a time, would be some kind good-natured friend, who had passed through the rough experience, who had sufficient remembrance of his own early mistakes and difficulties to comprehend all his bewilderment, and sufficient tolerance to endure being questioned on matters which to him have grown too trite and familiar to seem to need explanation. In Mr Warren's book he will meet with exactly the information he wants; he will find a chart of the profession unrolled before him; he may quietly test his own abilities, or his own courage, to adopt any of the several departments as they are submitted to his inspection. He will obtain all that he could gather from that kind good-natured friend at the bar, whom he has been longing for, and would so willingly seize by the button – nay, far more than he could gather from any one man who had not made the subject one of especial attention, and taken pains himself to collect information from various quarters. Besides, how infinitely agreeable is it, whilst yet a resolution is unripe, whilst yet it is the secret of our bosom, to be able to get our doubts solved, and our questions answered, from the silent pages of a book; to be spared the penance of exposing half-formed designs to the jocular scrutiny of our friends – to be permitted to consult without necessarily making a confidant – to be able to dismiss our thought, if it is destined to be dismissed, without betraying how dear a guest it has been.

The more youthful and less instructed of its readers will find every portion of this work useful to them; especially they will have reason to thank; the author for that facile introduction he has offered them to the study of the law itself. Never has been such a gently inclined plane set up, for weak and unsteady feet, against the hill of legal knowledge. The talent which Mr Warren has for familiar and elementary exposition is something quite peculiar. Nor will they fail to profit by his many practical hints for the discipline of the mind, and his advice as to their general reading. The student more advanced in years and in thought, and who entertains the project of entering the profession at a time when his mind has approached towards maturity, will perceive, and will have the candour to reflect, that much of the work was not written for him. But, on the other hand, he is the very person who will especially value it for that description of practical, familiar, but most necessary information, which it is rare to get from books at all – which to him it is peculiarly disagreeable to be compelled to extract piece-meal from chance conversation with men but half furnished with it, and perhaps impatient of the interrogatories put to them. What are the distinctions between the several species of the lawyer? What sort of an animal is, in reality, the conveyancer, or the special pleader, or the equity draftsman – what are its habits, where its haunts – how is it bred, how nourished – what process is he himself to go through, before he can be recognised as belonging to the class – how best may he set to work, and with least loss of time? – these are matters which he is very curious to know, and to him nothing is more welcome than to find them all explained in the printed page – to find them where he is accustomed to look for every thing, amongst his old friends the books.

Surprise has often been expressed at the fact, that there is no publicly appointed method of legal tuition, no lectures delivered on which it is compulsory to attend, not even any examination to be finally undergone before admittance to the bar. A little acquaintance, however, with the nature of legal studies, will soon dissipate this astonishment. There is but one way in which the law can be mastered; severe, steady, solitary reading, accompanied by the privilege of watching the real practice of the jurist in the chambers of the conveyancer or the special pleader. To one bent on the professional study of the law; lectures would be mere waste of time. To the idler they may bear the appearance, and bring some of the profit, of study; to the conscientious and resolved student, they would be an idleness and a dissipation. Where a subject admits of being oratorically treated, good lectures are extremely valuable; for oratory has its office in tuition, stimulates to reflection, and stirs generous sentiments, and we wish the oratory of the professor's chair were more cultivated amongst us than it is. Nor need we say that where the subject admits or requires the illustration of scientific experiments, lectures are almost indispensable. But in the tangled study of the law, where one must go backwards and forwards, as in a rope-walk, and twist one's own cable out of many threads – of what use can the lecturer possibly be? To teach us law in a fluent discourse, what is it but to have us feed – as the humming-birds are said to do – upon the wing? But even humming-birds feed in no such fashion; they sit down to their supper of rose-water. Much more must a lawyer have his table – his desk – fast before him; and spreading out his various fare, which needs a deal of mastication, feed alternately, and slowly and solemnly, on the several dishes which with ostrich stomach he has to digest.

As to the absence of all examination previous to an admission to the bar, the fact, that not only in our own inns of court, but in all similar institutions, such examinations have been allowed to dwindle into some empty and puerile form, sufficiently demonstrates their inutility. If an examination were appointed, it would be no test of the efficiency of the advocate; no sufficient guarantee to the ingenuous client who should wander into Westminster Hall in search of a lawyer. Not to add that the learned gentleman may have had ample time to forget all his legal knowledge in the interval between his call to the bar and the opening of his first brief. A license, indeed, is given to practise as an advocate, without any other qualification than that of respectability of character, and the payment of certain fees; but the case of no client is confided to the young orator, unless those who have the greatest interest in his competency are satisfied that he can be safely relied on. Men suffer their health to be trifled with by ignorant quacks and ridiculous pretenders – not their money. We need no Sir James Graham's bill in the profession of the law. Besides, it is not the good opinion of an uninformed public which the barrister has to seek or to depend upon. A lawyer, he is judged by lawyers. It is in the estimation of attorneys and solicitors that he must rise – not that of respectable ladies and nervous baronets. They stand between him and that unlearned public to which the physician, on the contrary, at once appeals.

The very circumstance, however, that there is no such public course of instruction marked out, and no prospective examination to be prepared for – that all is to be gained from that silent array of books which fill the long shelves of a legal library or from those chambers of the practitioner which, to those who look at them from without, seem as dark with mystery as they are with dust and smoke – this, we repeat, renders such a guide-book as that which Mr Warren has presented to the public, almost indispensable. In forming a critical estimation of his labours on this publication, it would be extremely unfair to forget, for a moment, the peculiar nature of the work. He is writing for the young. It is an elementary treatise. It is a book peculiarly practical; the very opposite of whatever is theoretical or speculative. If the style is somewhat more diffuse than we should on all occasions approve, we are far from regarding this as a defect here. The work, amongst other advantages, presents really a storehouse of that useful phraseology in which a public speaker should abound, that phraseology which lies between the familiarity of business and the pomp of oratory. And if, as we may perhaps be tempted again to remark, there is something too much of laudation of that profession and of that system of jurisprudence to which he is introducing the young aspirant, this too is a bias to which, in the present work, it would be ungracious to raise an objection. An elementary teacher should not chill and discourage his pupils by criticisms of a cold and censorious character; he should rather exercise his penetration in drawing into light concealed excellences. In this Mr Warren follows the example of the first of all commentators, the most successful of all teachers – Blackstone; who continues to be the most popular of all expounders of the law, even though the system that he expounds has almost deserted him. It seems that the law can be made obsolete, but not the commentary. With a pupil it is a thing understood and agreed upon that he is to learn the system as it now exists; to engage him to do this it were bad policy to decry that system, and expose its faults with a merciless analysis. When the student has mastered it as a lesson, he may then overlook and criticise it with what severity he thinks fit. We will quote a passage which will illustrate at once the lively manner of our writer, and also this happy Blackstonian tendency – the habit of animadverting very gravely on those errors of the law which have been reformed, and remaining still "a little blind" to those which are yet untouched.

"Down to the year 1832, the system of common law pleading and practice supplied the student, during the greater period of his pupilage, with little else than the most degrading and unprofitable drudgery. It presented to his despairing eyes a mass of vile verbiage – a tortuous complexity of detail, which defied the efforts of any but the most creeping ingenuity and industry. There was really every thing to discourage and disgust a liberal and enlightened mind, however well inured to labour by the invigorating discipline of logic and mathematics. The deep and clear waters – so to speak – of legal principle, there always were, and will be, for they are immutable and eternal; but you had to buffet your way to them through "many a mile of foaming filth," that harassed, exhausted and choked the unhappy swimmer long before he could get sight of the offing. Few beside those who had had the equivocal advantage of being early familiarised with such gibberish as "special general imparlance" – "special testatum capias" – "special original" – "testatum pone" – "protestando" – "colour" – "de bene esse," &c. &c. &c. could obtain a glimmering of daily practice, without a serious waste of time and depreciation of the mental faculties. Let the thousands who, under the old system, almost at once adopted and abandoned legal studies, attest the truth of this remark. There was, in short, every thing to discourage a gentleman from entering, to obstruct him in prosecuting, the legal profession. Recently, however, a great change has been effected. There has been a real reform – a practical, searching, comprehensive reform of the common law; a shaking down of innumerable dead leaves and rotten branches; a cutting away of all the shoots of prurient vegetation, which served but to disfigure the tree, and to conceal and injure its fruit. Now you may see, in the common law, a tree noble in its height and figure, sinewy in its branches, green in its foliage, and goodly in its fruit. May it be permitted, however, to express an humble hope, that the gardener will know when to lay aside his knife!" – (P. 20.)

And yet Warren has a knife, too, of his own which he would willingly employ upon some part of this noble tree – either its old or its new branches. It is impossible for even the most indulgent commentator not to perceive that there are in our system of pleading many technicalities, which, so far from being necessary to the administration of justice, have no other operation than to retard, to complicate, to defeat the administration of justice. At p. 738 – a very prudent and respectful distance from the quotation we have just made – we find the following admission: —

"Such is a faint sketch of the existing system of special pleading, upon the reform and remodelling of which has been bestowed, during the last fifteen years, the anxious and profound consideration of some of the ablest and most experienced legal intellects which were ever addressed to such an undertaking, or concerned in the practice or administration of the law. Their alterations were bold and extensive, and perhaps may be said to have been, to the same extent, successful. The principal objects proposed to be effected by the late changes were enumerated in an early part of this work, where also was given a general account of all the late changes effected in the department of Common Law pleading and practice. To this we now refer the reader; and also to the Appendix (No. IV.), where will be found, in extenso, the Rules of Court by which these great alterations were effected. While the principal objects of the framers of them have been accomplished, by effecting a great saving of expense in the length of the pleadings, and their incidents; by securing an economical and satisfactory trial at Nisi Prius, through the precise and specific nature of the issues required to be presented to the jury, and the effectual expedients resorted to, for the purpose of saving an unnecessary expenditure in obtaining evidence: it cannot be denied that the excessive stringency of the rules which restrict a plaintiff to a single count in respect of a single cause of action, and a defendant to a single plea in support of a single ground of defence, too frequently operates most injuriously, so as to secure the defeat of justice. It is continually a matter of serious difficulty, to refer a particular combination of facts to their appropriate legal category; and if the wrong one should be selected, substantial justice is sacrificed before arbitrary legal technicality. It would be easy to illustrate the truth of these remarks by reference to cases of daily occurrence. The rule in question must either be relaxed, or its injurious effects neutralized by greatly enlarged powers of amendment conferred upon the judge at Nisi Prius. With all these defects, however, it cannot be denied that the recent changes in the law of pleading, evidence, and practice, with reference to the interests of suitors, have justified the most sanguine anticipations of those who set in motion the machinery which effected those changes; and with reference to students and practitioners, have tended to exact a far greater amount of diligence, learning, and acuteness, than for a long series of years has been deemed requisite."

Mr Warren's illustrations, whether imaginary, or drawn from experience and observation, are always, as might be expected, graphic and amusing. It is thus that he exemplifies a very useful precept, which he gives to the young student for the bar: —

"He must very early familiarise himself with the correct meaning of at least the leading technical terms of Logic– which are of frequent use in the courts – not for petty pedantry or display, but from their real advantage – from, indeed, the necessity of the case. Instances of the vexatious consequences of ignorance in these matters will not unfrequently fall under the notice of a watchful observer. Some two or three years ago, a counsel, manifestly not having enjoyed a very superior education, was engaged in arguing a case, in banco, at Westminster – before four very able judges, one of them being a man remarkable for his logical acuteness and dexterity. 'No, no —that won't do,' said he, suddenly interposing – 'put the converse of the proposition, Mr – : try it that way.' The judge paused: the counsel too paused, while a slight expression of uneasiness flitted over his features. He expected the judge to 'put the converse' for him; but the judge did not. 'Put the converse of the proposition, Mr – , and see if that will hold' – repeated the judge with some surprise, and a little peremptoriness in his tone. But it was unpleasantly obvious that Mr – could not 'put the converse' of the proposition – nor understand what as meant. Some better informed brother barrister whispered to him the converse of the proposition – but it was useless: Mr – faltered – repeated a word or two, as if mechanically – 'Well!' said the judge, kindly suspecting the true state of the case, 'go on with your argument, Mr – !' It may appear strange that so glaring a case should occur at the bar – but, nevertheless, such a case did occur, and such cases have occurred, and are likely to occur again, as long as persons of inferior education come, intrepid in ignorance, to the bar."

We think, however, that Mr Warren is a little too hard upon the unfortunate orator, who was not aware of the meaning of the "converse of the proposition," and that the judge might as well have "put it" himself. A man may be a very good reasoner who has not learned "to name his tools," which is all that is taught by the logic of Aristotle.

How evidently is the following invested with all the vivid colouring of actual observation: —

"It can hardly be necessary, after all that has been said upon the subject of special pleading, both in this chapter and in preceding parts of the work, to warn the youth who rashly rushes to the bar without a competent knowledge of pleading, of the folly of which he is guilty, and the danger to which he is exposing himself. To a young counsel ignorant of pleading, a brief will be little else than a sort of Chinese puzzle. He must either give up in despair all attempts at mastering its contents, or hurry in ridiculous agitation from friend to friend, making vain efforts to 'cram' himself for some occasion of solitary display, afforded him by the zealous indiscretion of a friendly solicitor. Feverish with anxiety, wretched under the apprehension of public failure, and the consciousness of incompetence, after trembling in court lest he should be called upon to show himself, he returns to chambers, to curse his folly – to make, when too late, exertions to retrieve his false position, or abandon it for ever, with all the cloud-picturings of a vain and puerile ambition."

There is a general reluctance to believe in the union of literary talents and business-like qualities of mind. They are thought incompatible. A lover of literature is held to have little chance of success. A prejudice so general must have some foundation; but the incompatibility, in whatever degree it exists, lies, we are persuaded, not in the several mental qualities – not in the intellectual apparatus fitted for the two careers of literature and a profession – but in the different dispositions, in the diversity of tastes, which the two pursuits engender. The literary man fails in no faculty that profession calls for, but he may contract a strong repugnance for the species of activity it demands.

In literature thought is indulged and solicited for its own sake; it excites or it amuses; it may be invested with the deepest and most stirring interests of religion and philosophy, or it may be the very rainbow of the mind, having no life but only in and for its beauty. In professional vocations the intellectual effort is subordinated to a definite and fixed purpose; it is the purpose, not the thought, which must continually animate our exertions; and the purpose binds down the current of thought rigidly to its own service. Literature is the luxury of the spirit, the free aristocratic life of intellectual pleasure; profession is the useful but fettered existence of the sons of toil. In the one, the spirit revels as a mountain stream that leaps in the face of heaven from crag to crag; in the other, it is the same stream, lower down, confined in narrow channel, and half-buried by the ponderous wheel-work of that ever-clacking mill which it has to turn.

What wonder, then, that the literary man should have certain disgusts to overcome when he is called on to forsake his own free and variable life, for a mode of existence where thought is no longer her own mistress, but, with constant repetition, must take service in the mechanism of society? And he does often recalcitrate. But when, owing to some overruling motive of ambition or necessity, this distaste is overcome, it is an immense advantage which the possessor of literary talents has over the ordinary practitioner of any profession. In that of the law it has been especially remarked, that those who have been most eminently successful have confessed to the repugnance they had, in the first instance, to conquer; and such examples of eminent success have, for the most part, consisted of men who had betrayed a decided talent and aptitude for literature.