Now, we hear many of our readers crying out against the barbarity of confining the free denizens of the air in wire or wicker cages. Gentle readers, do, we pray, keep your compassion for other objects. Or, if you are disposed to be argumentative with us, let us just walk down stairs to the larder, and tell the public truly what we there behold-three brace of partridges, two ditto of moor-fowl, a cock-pheasant, poor fellow, a man and his wife of the aquatic, or duck kind, and a woodcock, vainly presenting his long Christmas bill

"Some sleeping kill'd—

All murder'd."

Why, you are indeed a most logical reasoner, and a most considerate Christian, when you launch out into an invective against the cruelty exhibited in our cages. Let us leave this den of murder, and have a glass of our wife's home-made frontiniac in her own boudoir. Come, come, sir,-look on this newly-married couple of canaries. -The architecture of their nest is certainly not of the florid order, but my Lady Yellowlees sits on it a well-satisfied bride. Come back in a day or two, and you will see her nursing triplets. Meanwhile, hear the earpiercing fife of the bridegroom!Where will you find a set of happier people, unless, perhaps, it be in our parlour, or our library, or our nursery? For, to tell you the truth, there is a cage or two in almost every room of the house. Where is the cruelty-here, or in your blood-stained larder? But you must eat, you reply. We answer-not necessarily birds. The question is about birds-cruelty to birds; and were that sagacious old wild-goose, whom one single moment of heedlessness brought last Wednesday to your hospitable board, at this moment alive, to bear a part in our conversation, can you dream that, with all your Jeffreyan ingenuity and eloquence, you could persuade him, the now defunct and dejected that you were under the painful necessity of eating him with stuffing and apple-sauce?

The intelligent author of the Treatise on British Birds does not condescend to justify the right we claim to encage them; but he shows his genuine humanity in instructing us how to render happy and healthful their imprisonment. He says very prettily,

"What are town-gardens and shrubberies in squares, but an attempt to ruralize the city? So strong is the desire in man to participate in country pleasures, that he tries to bring some of them even to his room. Plants and birds are sought after with avidity, and cherished with delight. With flowers he endeavours to make his apartments resemble a garden; and thinks of groves and fields, as he listens to the wild sweet melody of his little captives. Those who keep and take an interest in song-birds, are often at a loss how to treat their little warblers during illness, or to prepare the proper food best suited to their various constitutions; but that knowledge is absolutely necessary to preserve these little creatures in health for want of it, young amateurs and bird-fanciers have often seen, with regret, many of their favourite birds perish."

Now, here we confess is a good physician. In Edinburgh we understand there are about 500 medical practitioners on the human race,-and we have dog-doctors, and horse-doctors, who come out in numbers-but we have had no bird-doctors. Yet often, too often, when the whole house rings from garret to cellar with the cries of children teething, or in the hoopingcough, the little linnet sits silent on his perch, a moping bunch of feathers, and then falls down dead, when his lilting life might have been saved by the simplest medicinal food skilfully administered. Surely if we have physicians to attend our tread-mills, and regulate the diet and day's work of merciless ruffians, we should not suffer our innocent and useful prisoners thus to die unattended. Why do not the Ladies of Edinburgh form themselves into a Society for this purpose?

Not one of all the philosophers in the world has been able to tell us what is happiness. Sterne's Starling is weakly supposed to have been miserable. Probably he was one of the most contented birds in the universe. Does confinement, the closest, most uncompanioned confinement-make one of ourselves unhappy? Is the shoemaker sitting with his head on his knees in a hole in the wall from morning to night, in any respect to be pitied? Is the solitary orphan, that sits all day sewing in a garret, while the old woman for whom she works is out washing, an object of compassion? or

the widow of fourscore, hurkling over the embers, with a stump of a pipe in her toothless mouth? Is it so sad a thing indeed to be alone or to have one's motions circumscribed within the narrowest imaginable limits? Nonsense all. Nine-tenths of mankind, in manufacturing and commercial countries, are cribbed and confined into little room,-generally, indeed, together, but often solitary.

Then, gentle reader, were you everin a Highland shieling? It is built of turf, and is literally alive; for the beautiful heather is blooming, and wild-flowers too-and walls and roof are one sound of bees. The industrious little creatures must have come several long miles for their balmy spoil. There is but one human creature in that shieling, but he is not at all solitary. He no more wearies of that lonesome place, than do the sun-beams or the shadows. To himself alone, he chants his old Gaelic songs, or frames wild ditties of his own to the raven or red deer. Months thus pass on ; and he descends again to the lower country. Perhaps he goes to the wars-fights-bleeds-and returns to Badenoch or Lochaber; and once more, blending in his imagination the battles of his own regiment, in Egypt, or Spain, or at Waterloo, with the deeds done of yore by Ossian sung, lies contented by the door of the same shieling, restored and beautified, in which he had dreamt away the summers of his youth.

To return to birds in cages ;-they are, when well, uniformly as happy as the day is long. What else could oblige them, whether they will or no, to burst out into song,-to hop about so pleased and pert,-to play such fantastic tricks like so many whirligigs, to sleep so soundly, and to awake into a small, shrill, compressed twitter of joy, at the dawn of light? So utterly mistaken was Sterne, and all the other sentimentalists, that his Starling, who he absurdly opined was wishing to get out, would not have stirred a peg had the door of his cage been flung wide open, but would have pecked like a very game-cock at the hand inserted to give him his liberty. Depend upon it, that Starling had not the slightest

idea of what he was saying; and had he been up to the meaning of his words, would have been shocked at his ungrateful folly. Look at Canaries, and Chaffinches, and Bullfinches, and " the rest," how they amuse themselves for a while flitting about the room, and then finding how dull a thing it is to be citizens of the world, bounce up to their cages, and shut the door from the inside, glad to be once more at home. Begin to whistle or sing yourself, and forthwith you have a duet, or a trio. We can imagine no more perfectly tranquil and cheerful life than that of a Goldfinch in a cage, in Spring, with his wife and his children. All his social affections are cultivated to the utmost. He possesses many accomplishments unknown to his brethren among the trees ;—he has never known what it is to want a meal in times of the greatest scarcity; and he admires the beautiful frost-work on the windows when thousands of his feathered friends are buried in the snow, or what is almost as bad, baked up into pies, and devoured by a large supper-party of both sexes, who fortify their flummery and flirtation by such viands, and, remorseless, swallow dozens upon dozens of the warblers of the woods.

Ay, ay, Mr Goldy! you are wondering what I am now doing, and speculating upon me with arch eyes and elevated crest, as if you would know the subject of my lucubrations. What the wiser or better wouldst thou be of human knowledge? Sometimes that little heart of thine goes pit-a-pat, when a great, ugly, staring contributor thrusts his inquisitive nose within the wires or when a strange cat glides round and round the room, fascinating thee with the glare of his fierce fixed eyes;-but what is all that to the woes of an Editor?-Yes, sweet simpleton ! do you not know that I am the Editor of Blackwood's Magazine-Christopher North! Yes, indeed, we are that very man, that self-same much-calumniated man-monster and Ogre.There, there!-perch on my shoulder, and let us laugh together at the whole world.

In spite of all the sins, both of omission and commission, with which Tory, Whig, and Radical Journals have, perhaps justly, charged them, these are two volumes of extraordinary interest-nor are they discreditable to Mr Moore. The subject was, indeed, a most difficult and dangerous one, nor was it possible for a man of Mr Moore's peculiar opinions, temperament, and genius, to treat it without involving himself in a sea of troubles. No doubt, were we to submit his work to a strict and unsparing scrutiny, we could get up a long, laboured article, full of refutations and imputations and confutations, that would prove him to be one of the greatest criminals on our annual Calendar. But as we have declared this to be a month of Mercy-we shall treat Mr Moore with a gentleness that may well sur prise and delight him-a gentleness, indeed, which even in our most truculent Numbers we generally display towards every writer who has at any time delighted us-and need we say, that that has been done by the poet of Lalla Rookh ?

Let us take first the Politics-and get done with them in not many words -then a paragraph or two about Sheridan, as Richard Brinsley in domestic and social life-and finally, a few remarks on his Dramatic Genius. Each of these three subjects would furnish matter for an article-but we hate prosing-so hope to settle them all in one sober and sensible sheet.

Never was any secret betrayed with more naiveté, than the account which Mr Moore gives of the principles of the Whigs, in advocating and fostering the cause of reform. We cannot imagine the amazed looks with which Lord Grey, and the remnants and refuse of the Fox party, must have read the passage alluded to, without bursting into immoderate and remorseless laughter. Never was such a charge made by any of all the adversaries of the Foxites, as that little passage contains, where our author, speaking of the institution of the society of "The Friends of the People," explains the real views and motives with which Fox, Grey, Sheridan, &c. connected

*

themselves with that seditious confederacy. But the exposure of the hypocrisy is too interesting to be merely adverted to; we must, in justice to Mr Moore's simplicity and to Whig honesty, quote the passage.

"In the Spring of this year was esta blished the Society of The Friends of the People,' for the express purpose of obtaining a Parliamentary Reform. To this Association, which, less for its professed object than for the republican tendencies of some of its members, was particularly obnoxious to the loyalists of the day, Mr Sheridan, Mr Grey, aud many others of the leading persons of the Whig party, belonged. Their Address to the People of England, which was put forth in the month of April, contained an able and temperate exposition of the grounds upon which they sought for Reform; and the names of Sheridan, Mackintosh, Whitbread, &c., appear on the list of the Committee by which this paper was drawn up.

"It is a proof of the little zeal which Mr Fox felt at this period on the subject of Reform, that he withheld the sanction of his name from a Society, to which so many of his most intimate political friends belonged. Some notice was taken in the House of this symptom of backwardness in the cause; and Sheridan, in replying to the insinuation, said, that they wanted not the signature of his Right Honourable Friend to assure them of his concurrence. They had his bond in the steadiness of his political principles and the integrity of his heart. Mr Fox himself, however, gave a more definite explanation of the circumstance. 'He might be asked,' he said, why his name was not on the list of the Society for Reform? His reason was, that though he saw great and enormous grievances, he did not see the remedy.' It is to be doubted, indeed, whether Mr Fox ever fully admitted the principle upon which the demand for a Reform is founded. When he afterwards espoused the question so warmly, it seems to have been merely as one of those weapons caught up in the heat of a warfare, in which Liberty itself appeared to him too imminently endangered, to admit of the consideration of any abstract principle, except the summary one of the right or resistance to power abused. From what has been already said, too, of the language held by Sheridan on this subject, it may be concluded that, though far

VOL. XIX.

Ι

more ready than his friend to inscribe Reform upon the banner of the party, he had even still less made up his mind as to the practicability or expediency of the measure. Looking upon it as a question, the agitation of which was useful to Liberty, and at the same time counting upon the improbability of its objects being accomplished, he adopted at once, as we have seen, the most speculative of all the plans that had been proposed, and flattered himself that he thus secured the benefit of the general principle, without risking the inconvenience of any of the practical details.”

But this insincerity of the Whigs in the cause of reform, about which they

raised such clamours to molest the possessors of place and patronage, is still more clearly described in an earlier part of the work, and that passage also, in justice to all parties, should be extracted. It is where our author speaks of Sheridan's debut as a politi

cian.

"In the society of such men the destiny of Mr Sheridan could not be long in fixing. On the one side, his own keen thirst for distinction, and, on the other, a quick and sanguine appreciation of the service that such talents might render in the warfare of party, could not fail to hasten the result that both desired.

"His first appearance before the public as a political character was in conjunction with Mr Fox, at the beginning of the year 1780, when the famous Resolutions on the State of the Representa tion, signed by Mr Fox as chairman of the Westminster Committee, together with a Report on the same subject from the Sub-committee, signed by Sheridan, were laid before the public.

Annual

Parliaments and Universal Suffrage were the professed objects of this meeting; and the first of the Resolutions, subscribed by Mr Fox, stated that Annual Parliaments are the undoubted right of the people of England.'

"Notwithstanding this strong declaration, it may be doubted whether Sheridan was, any more than Mr Fox, a very sin

cere friend to the principle of Reform;

and the manner in which he masked his disinclination or indifference to it was

strongly characteristic both of his humour and his tact. Aware that the wild scheme of Cartwright and others, which these Resolutions recommended, was wholly impracticable, he always took re

fuge in it when pressed upon the subject, and would laughingly advise his political friends to do the same;- Whenever any one,' he would say, 'proposes to you a specific plan of Reform, always answer that you are for nothing short of Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage-there you are safe.' He also had evident delight, when talking on this question, in referring to a jest of Burke, who said that there had arisen a new party of Reformers, still more orthodox than the rest, who thought Annual Parliaments far from being sufficiently frequent, and who, founding themselves on the latter words of the statute of Edward

III., that a Parliament shall be holden every year once, and more often if need be,' were known by the denomination of the Oftener-if-need-bes. For my part,' he would add, in relating this,' I am an Oftener-if-need-be.' Even when most serious on the subject (for, to the last, he professed himself a warm friend to Reform) his arguments had the air of being ironical and insidious. To Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage, he would say, the principles of representation naturally and necessarily led,-any less extensive proposition was a base compromise and a dereliction of right; and the first encroachment on the people was the act of Henry VI., which limited the power of election to forty shilling freeholders within the county, whereas the real right was in the 'outrageous whom the preamble recites that the and excessive' number of people, by choice had been made of late.-Such were the arguments by which he affected to support his cause, and it is not difficult to detect the eyes of the snake glistening from under them."

When the Whig-club dinners are remembered the meetings in Palace Yard-the motions in the House of Commons, to say nothing of the hobbernobbery of the Duke of Norfolk with Wishart the tobacconist-history loses her gravity, and holds both her sides. The poor Whigs wanted but this to render their degradation as complete as their influence and pretensions have become despicable. But the worst part of the effect of the simplicity with which these exposures of the public dishonesty, of so many time-honoured and flagrant patriots, is the distrust with which it must inspire the people against every pub

lic man who professes to be their friend. And yet, in the face of this "peaching" of his whole political associates, Mr Moore impugns the integrity of Mr Burke! He does not, certainly, attempt to underrate the wonderful mind and acquirements of that extraordinary man; but he speaks of him as so enthralled by his temper and irascibility, as to have been little better than a maniac-an inspired maniac he would perhaps be willing to allow. But what are we to think, either of the candour or the discernment of our author, who, with the visible demonstration before him of all that Burke's forecasting wisdom had predicted-come to pass-acted and done-described and recorded in the chronicles of every civilized nation -yet ventures to insinuate that the influence upon the prophet himself, of the stupendous apocalypse with which he roused and alarmed the world, was the effect of a sordid calculation-the consent of his poverty to a crime! And, forsooth, because it was the opinion of those pure and precious reformers - those "Friends of the people," with whom he had acted, till they became such friends of the people as Mr Moore has in his simplicity described. In quitting them, it is alleged, that he sold himself to the ministry, when, in point of fact, except in the simple principle of hostility to France, it is matter of history and moral demonstration, that there was little communion of spirit, or common scope of intelligence, between Burke and Pitt, or any of the prominent members of the administration as it stood prior to the accession of the seceding Whigs. But Moore attacking Burke, is the antelope attacking the elephant-the war elephant, castled and garrisoned with all his gorgeous trappings gloriously upon him, as he comes forth from the orient gates of imperial palaces, amidst the Nabobs and Rajahs of the Indus and the Ganges.

Humiliating as the views of human nature are, which the Memoirs of Sheridan lay open, in the conduct of his political associates-there are yet passages which must awaken feelings of intenser mortification than even those which draw so much sympathy towards him, in as much as they affect the secret sentiments of every man of talent, who, without

family consideration or political energy, has the misfortune to incur the acquaintance of the great. Mr Moore touches the subject with the delicacy peculiar to his poctical pen, and considering how much he has himself experienced of that costly condescension, there is perhaps not another paragraph in his book so pregnant with meaning, as the few sentences in which he speaks of Sheridan's enjoyment of the proud consciousness of having surmounted the disadvantages of birth and station, and placed himself on a level with the highest and noblest of the land. But mark what follows, and let those who are possessed but of genius-remember the admonition it contains, whenever they may be honoured with the humbling situation of a place at the tables of the lordly. "This footing in the society of the great he could only have attained by Parliamentary eminence. MERE WRITER, with all his genius,

As a

HE NEVER WOULD HAVE BEEN THUS

ADMITTED adeundem among them. Talents in literature or science, UN

ASSISTED BY THE ADVANTAGES OF

This

BIRTH, may lead to association with the great, but rarely to equality—it is a passport through the well-guarded frontier, but no title to naturalization within. By him who has not been born among them, this can only be achieved by POLITICS."-Vol. II. p. 73. is well said; but Mr Moore might have gone farther-for he must have often observed-shall we venture to say felt that the author or the artist at the table of the great, is but as a dainty, served up for the entertainment of the other arrogant guests. There are not half-a-dozen tables in London of "the lovers of the arts," as Mick Kelly calls them, which a man of genius, unknown in politics, who has a right respect for himself, would desire often to revisit-so offensively does the spirit of the legislative caste reign at them all.

There is one part of this work which will be read with interest and with surprise-we refer to Sheridan's intimacy with his present Majesty-and we will venture to assert, that every word Mr Moore says regarding it will be wormwood and gall to many a proud and pompous Whig. One thing it makes out very clearly, viz. that there never did exist between the Prince of Wales and Mr Fox that entire and