Newgate Calendar, the Life of Colonel Gardi- | Pamela, and Dick Honeycomb, and my anner, and, sure as fate, at the bottom of the cestor Nathaniel. I thought that my landlady heap, Pamela or Virtue Rewarded. "Virtue was Mrs. Harlowe, and that Dick, being pressed Rewarded!" thought I: "I hate these merce- to marry, said he would not have his cousin nary virtues; these bills brought to Heaven Pamela, but Nell Gwynn; which the serious for payment; these clinkings of cash in the Commonwealth officer approved, "because," white pockets of conscience.' "You have one said he, of the other's immoral character." novel, at any rate, Mrs. Wilson." "Sure, sir, In one of my reveries, between sleep and awake, it is better than a novel. Oh, it is a book full I hardly knew whether the rustling sounds I of good fortune." "Of good fortune! What, heard were those of the trees out-of-doors, or of to the maid-servant?" "To everybody that old Mrs. Harlowe's petticoat. has to do with it. Miss V. was dubious, like, which of the cottages to live in; and she fancied ours because she found Pamela and Colonel Gardiner in the corner cupboard." "I dare say.-Now here," said I, when left to myself, "here is vanity at second hand. The old lady must take a cottage because she found a book in it, written by an old gentleman, who knew the old lady her mother. And what a book!" With all my admiration of Richardson, Pamela had ever been an object of my dislike. I hated her little canting ways, her egotism eternally protesting humility, and her readiness to make a prize of the man who, finding his endeavours vain to ruin her, reconciled her virtue and vanity together by proposing to make her his wife. Pamela's is the only female face to which I think I could ever have wished to give a good box on the ear. "And this," said I, "was the old maid's taste. It is a pity she was not a servant-maid. The rest of the appellation, somehow or other, might have been got rid of." While I was thus venting my spleen against a harmless old woman, in a condition of life which I had always treated with respect, and was beginning to regret that I had got into "methodistical" lodgings, my hostess comes back again, with three more books, to wit, Paradise Lost, Thomson's Seasons, and a volume containing the whole of the Spectator in double columns. "Head of my ancestors!" cried I, uttering (but internally) a Chinese oath: "here thou art at home again, Harry! This is sense. This is something like. The cottage is an excellent cottage; and, for aught I know, had the honour of being one of the many cottages in which my great grandfather's friend Sir Richard used to eschew the visits of the importu nate." There was a bed-room as neat as the sitting room, and with more trees at the window. My leg was very painful, and I had feverish dreams. However, my horseback had made me nothing the worse for my dinner, and having taken no supper, my dreams, though disturbed, were not frightful. I dreamed of In the morning, it was delightful to hear the sound of the birds. There is something exhilarating in the singing of birds, analogous to the brilliancy of sunshine. My leg was now worse, but not bad enough to hinder me from noticing the chaney shepherds and shepherdesses on the mantelpiece, or those others on the coloured bed-curtain; loving pairs with lambs, repeated in the same group at intervals all over the chintz, as if the beholder had a cut-glass eye. The window of the sitting-room has a little white curtain on a rod. This, of the bed-room, is a proper casement with diamond panes; and you can see nothing outside but green leaves. However ill I may be, I am always the worse for lying in bed. I contrived to get up and remove to the settee in the other room; at which the doctor, when he came, shook his head. But I did very well with the settee. It was brought near the window, with the table; and I had a very pretty look-out. Opposite the window you can see nothing but trees; but sitting on the left side, you have a view over a fine meadow to the village church, which is embowered in elms. There is a path and a style to the meadow, and luxuriant hedge-row trees. I was as well pleased with my situation as a man well could be, who had a leg perpetually reminding him of its existence; but Pouldon is at a good distance from town, and I was thinking how long it would take a messenger to fetch me some books, when I heard a shot from a fowling-piece. I recollected the month, and thought how well its name was adapted to these Septembrizers of the birds. Looking under the trees, I saw a stout fellow, in a jacket and gaiters and the rest of the costume of avicide, picking his way along the palings, with his gun re-prepared. "Aye," said I, "he has 'shot as he is used to do,' and laid up some poor devil with a broken thigh. There he goes, sneaking along, to qualify some others for the hospital, and they have none." I threw up the window, to baffle his next shot with the noise. He turned round. It was Jack Tomkins. "Hallo! my boy," said he, "why, where the devil have you got? D-n me, if I don't blow. You deserve it, Harry, for keeping so close. I'll tell Tom Neville and the rest; Snug's the word, eh? Is she pretty? Some delicate little devil, I warrant, fit for your verses and all that, eh?" "She's too delicate for you, Jack; you'd frighten her." "Oh, don't tell me. They're not frightened so easily. What the devil are you putting out of the way there? You may try to laugh as you please; but hang me, Harry-I mustn't come up, I suppose?" "Pray do; and (lowering my voice) I'll introduce you to a little friend of mine, of the name of Leg. Jack! Jack! say nothing at the door-Most respectable woman -You understand me." Jack (who is a man of fortune, and was at Trinity, though the uninitiated would not suppose it), clapped a finger significantly on one side of his nose, and knocked very much like a gentleman. Presently he came into the room grinning and breathing like an ogre. "My dear Honeycomb, how are you?-an unexpected pleasure, eh? The good lady tells me you have hurt yourself: something about a horse-what, Bayardo the spotless, eh? (Here Mrs. Wilson left the room, and Jack burst out.) Oh, you devil! Well, where's Lalage? Where's Miss Leg-Fanny or Betty, or what the devil's her name?" "The poor thing has a very odd name, Jack. What think you of Bad Leg?" "Nonsense. Miss Bad Leg! impossible. I know of nobody of the name of Bad. Come, you're joking, and I can't stop long. I'll come back to dinner, if you like; but must be off now;-so introduce me. Is that the way there?" "No, this is the way, Jack. Little Bad Leg, my dear creature, allow me to introduce my friend John Tomkins, Esquire, of Galloping Hall. John Tomkins-Bad Leg." Eh? pooh, pooh, Harry. This is one of your fetches. Come, come, I know your goes.” Egad, Jack, it's neither my fetch nor my go, at present, I assure you. There is an old epigram | cottagers, I could have read you a bit of a lecture myself, by way of a muffler." "Why, Jack, as you say, I have caught you in the fact, and I wonder at a fellow of your sense and spirit, that you're not above cutting up a parcel of tom-tits." "Grouse, Harry, grouse, and partridges and pheasants, and all that. Tom-tits! let the Cockneys try to cut up tomtits." "Well, to be sure there's a good deal of difference between breaking the legs of partridges and tom-tits. The partridge, too, is a fierce bird, and can defend itself. It's a gallant thing, a fight with a partridge!" · Eh? Nonsense. Now you are at some of your banter. But it's no joke, I assure you, to me, having a fine morning's sport. You can read and all that; but every man to his taste. However, I can't stop at present. Here's Needle, poor fellow, wants to be off. Glorious morning-never saw such a morning-but I'll come back to dinner, if you like, instead of going to the Greyhound. I gave a brace of partridges just now to the good woman: and I say, Harry, if you get me some claret, I'll have it out with you-I will, upon my soul-I'll rub up my logic, and have a regular spar." My friend Jack returned in good time, and had his birds well dressed. I was in despair about the claret, till the host of the Greyhound drew it out from a store which he kept against the month of September; and Jack being a good-humoured fellow, and having had a vietorious morning, he did very well. Mrs. Wilson and the Doctor had equally protested against my having company to dinner, being afraid of the noise and the temptation to eat; but I promised them to abstain, and that I would talk as much as possible to hinder Jack from being obstreperous; which they thought a dangerous remedy. I got off very well, by dint of talking while Jack ate; and such is vanity, that I was not displeased to see that I rose greatly in my hostess's opinion by my defence of the bird-creation. It was curious to observe how Jack shattered her, as she came in and out, with his oaths and great voice, and how gratefully she seemed to take breath and substance again under the Paradisaical shelter of my arguments. But I believe I startled her too, with the pictures I was obliged to draw. This is the worst of such points of discussion. You are obliged to put new ideas of pain and trouble into innocent heads, in the hope of saving pain and trouble itself. But we must not hesitate for this. The one is a mere notion compared with the other. It is soon got rid of or set aside by minds in health; and the unhealthy ones are liable to worse deductions, if the matter is not fairly laid open. oath you ever heard. He had champed a shot, with an old tooth. Now that's meat and drink to you, Harry, for all your tenderness." "Why, it was only a shot in a black coat, Jack, instead of a black cock." "That's famous. I'll tell him of that. Oh, Hal, your laugh is savage. See you enjoy the sport now yourself.” "It ought to be a lesson to him." "Oh yes! mighty considerate persons you Tatler and Spectator men are, and would make fine havoc with our amusements." "Excuse me. 666 66 66 It is you that make fine havoc. I would have you amuse yourself to your heart's content, if you would do it without breaking the bones and hearts of your fellow-creatures.” Fellow-creatures!' and their hearts!' The hearts of woodcocks and partridges ! Pooh, pooh ! Bilson might have borne his pain better, I own, but what he says is very true;he says, if you come to think of it, there must be pain in the world, and it would be unmanly to think of it in this light." "Very well. Then do you, Jack, who are so manly, and so willing to encourage one's sports, stand a little farther, and let me crack your shin with this poker." "Nonsense. That's a very different thing." Perhaps you'd prefer a good crack on the skull?" "Nonsense." "Or a thrustout of your eye?" "No, no; all that's very different." Well, you know what you have been about this morning. Go and pick your way again along the palings there; and leave me your fowling-piece, and I'll endeavour to shoot you handsomely through the body." Nonsense, nonsense. I'm a man, you know; and a bird's a bird. Besides, birds don't feel as we do. They're not Christians. They are not reasoning beings. They're not made of the same sort of stuff. In short, it's no use talking. There's no end of these things.' "Just so. This is precisely the way I should argue if I had the winging of you. Here,' I should say, 'is Mr. John Tomkins.' Mind, I am standing with my manning-piece by a hedge." "With your what?" With my manning-piece. You cannot say fowling-piece, when it is men that are to be brought down." However, wishing to let Jack have his ease in perfection, as far as he could, I was for postponing the argument to another day, and seeing him relish his birds and claret in peace. But the more he drank, the less he would hear of it. "Besides," says he, "I've been talking about it to Bilson-you know Bilson, the Christ Church man,-and he's been putting me up to some prime good arguments, 'faith. I hope I shan't forget 'em. By the by, I'll tell you a good joke about Bilson-But you don't eat anything. What, is your leg so bad as that comes to? You don't pretend, I hope, not to eat partridge, because of your love of the birds?" "No, Jack, but I'd rather know that you had killed 'em than Bilson, because you are a jollier hand; you don't go to the sport with such reverend sophistry." "That's famous. Bilson, to be sure,-But stop, don't let me forget another thing, now I think of it. Bilson says you eat poultry. What do you say to that? You eat chicken." "I am not sure that I can apologize for eating grouse, except, as I said before, when you kill 'em. Evil communications corrupt good platters. I can only say that no grouse should be killed for me, unless a perfect Tomkins-an unerring shot-had the bringing of them down. I could give up poultry too; but death is common to all; a fowl is soon despatched; and many a fowl would not exist, if death for the dinner-table were not part of his charter. I confess I should not like to keep poultry. There is a violation of fellowship and domesticity in killing the sharers of our homestead, and especially in keeping them to kill. It would make me seem like an ogre. But this is one sentiment: that violated by making a sport of cruelty is another. But I will not argue this matter with you now, Jack. It would be a cruelty itself. It would be inhospitable, and a foppery. I wish to put wine down your throat, and not to thrust my arguments. Besides, as you say, I never shall convince you; so drink your claret, and tell me where you were yesterday.' "Why at Bil-"Oh, now you're joking.' "I beg your parson's, I tell you, and so I must talk while I don; you will find it no joke presently. Here,' think of it. We had a famous joke with Bil- says I, 'is Mr. John Tomkins coming;' or, son. Since he went into orders, he is very 'Here is a Tomkins. Look at him. He's in fine anxious not to swear; and so he laid a wager coat and waistcoat (we can't say feather, you he'd never swear again; and yesterday, in the know:) keep close: now for my Joe Manton: middle of dinner, while he was champing his you shall see how I'll pepper him.' 'Pray bird, and cutting up your argument about don't,' says my companion. 'A Tomkins is a cruelty, all of a sudden what does our Vicar Tomkins after all, and has his feelings as we but clap his hand to his jaw as if he was going have.' 'Stuff!' says I: Tomkinses don't feel to give a view holla, and rap out the d-dest as we do. They're not Christians, for they do 66 not do as they would be done by. They're not reasoning beings, for they do not see that a leg's a leg. They're not made of the same sort of stuff; and so if they bleed, it does not signify:-if they die of a torturing fracture, who cares? In short, it's no use talking. There's no end of these things. So here goes. Now if I hit him, he is killed outright, which is no harm to anybody; and if I wound him, why he only goes groaning and writhing for three or four days, and who cares for that?'" "Upon my soul, if I listen, you'll make a milk-sop of me. Consider think of the advantages of fresh air and exercise; of getting up in the morning, and scouring the country, and all that." Excellent but, my dear Tomkins, the birds are not bound to suffer, because you want fresh air." But it's the only time of the year, perhaps, that I can get out: and I must have something to do-something to occupy me and lead me about." "The birds, Tomkins, are not bound to have their legs and thighs broken, because you are in want of something to lead you about." "Well, you know what I mean. I mean that we must not look too nicely into these things, as somebody said about fish; or we should fret ourselves for nothing. The birds kill one another." "Yes, from necessity; for the want of a meal. But they do not torture or if they did, that would be because they did not reason as well as you and I, Tomkins." "What I mean to say is, that there's pain in the world already: we cannot help it; and if we can turn it to pleasure, so much the better. This is manly, I think." 'Well said, indeed. But to turn pain into pleasure, and to add to it by more pain, are two different things, are they not? To bear pain like a man, and to inflict it like a sportsman, are two different things." "A sportsman can bear pain as well as anybody." "Then why does he not begin by turning his own pain into a pleasure? As it is, he turns his own pleasure to another's pain. Why does he not begin with himself?" "How with himself?" "Why, you talk of the want of amusement and excitement. Now to say nothing of cricket, and golf, and boating, and other sports, are there no such things to be had as quarter-staves, single-stick, and broken heads? A good handsome pain there is a gallant thing, and strengthens the soul as well as the body. If there must be a certain portion of pain in the world, these were the ways to share it. But to sneak about, safe one's self, with a gun and a dog, and inflict all sorts of wounds and torments upon a parcel of little helpless birds,Tomkins, you know not what you are at, when you do it; or you are too much of a man to go on." "I cannot think that we inflict those tortures you speak of." "How many birds do you wound instead of kill? Say, upon an average, twenty to one, which is a generous computation. How many hundred birds would this make in the course of the day? How many thousands in the course of a season? To bring them down, and then be obliged to kill them, is butcherly enough: but to lame, and dislocate, and shatter the joints and bodies of so many that fly off, and leave them to die a lingering death in their agony,I think it would not be unworthy of some philosophers and teachers, if they were to think a little of all this as they go, and not talk of the 'sport' and the 'amusement' like others; as if men were to be trained up at once into thought and want of thought, into humanity and cruelty. Really, men are not the only creatures in existence; and the laugh of mutual complacency and approbation is apt to contain very sorry and shallow things, even among the 'celebrated' and 'highly respectable.' I don't speak of you, Jack; but of those who make a profession of thinking, which you know you are not under the necessity of doing. But what's the matter?" "I've got the d-dest toothache come upon me. It's this cursed draught. Of all pains the toothache is the most horrible. I've no patience with it." "I'll shut the door. There now never mind the toothache, for I'll bear it capitally." "You bear it! That's a good one. Very easy for you to bear it; but how the devil can I?Hm! hm! (writhing about) it's the cursedest pain." "Stay-here's some oil of cloves Mrs. Wilson has brought you. How does it feel now?" Wonderfully. The pain is quite gone. You It was very bad, I assure you. must not think I am wanting in proper courage as a man, because it hurt me so. You know, Harry, I can be as bold as most men, though I say it who shouldn't." "My dear Jack, you have as much right to speak the truth as I have. The boldest of men is not expected to be without feeling. An officer may go bravely into battle, and bear it bravely too, but he must feel it: he cannot be insensible to a shattered knee." "Certainly not."-"Or to a jaw blown away-" By no means.' "Or four of his ribs jammed in-" "Horrible!" "Or a face mashed, and his nose forced in-" "Don't speak of it!" "Or his two legs taken off by a cannon-ball, he being left to fester to death on a winter's night on a large plain." "Upon my soul, you make my flesh creep on my bones." "A gallant spirit is not bound to A COUNTRY LODGING. academical closet would have been of no avail."" He's "But "Well now, Harry, that's touching. right about the precepts. You have saved 'em from being dry, eh, with your claret; but all that you have said hasn't touched me like that story. A lapwing! hang me if I shall have the heart to touch another lapwing." other birds, Jack, have feelings, as well as lapwings. "What do you say, though, about Providence? Bilson said some famous things about Providence. What do you say to that?" 'Oh, ho! what! he feel all this, or even to hear of it, without | no wish to forget, for it had power to touch my heart, shuddering, even though the battle may be whilst yet a boy, when a thousand dry precepts in the necessary, and a great good produced by it to society." "Certainly, certainly, God knows." "It is only a woodcock or a snipe that ought to bear it without complaining: your partridge is the only piece of flesh and blood that we may put into such a state for no necessity, but 66 How? purely for our sport and pleasure. What's that you say?" "I say it is none but birds that we may, with a perfect conscience, lame, lacerate, mash, and blow their legs and beaks away, and leave, God knows where, to perish of neglect and torture, they being the only masculine creatures living, and not to be lowered into comparison with soldiers and gallant men." Hey? Why as to that?Hey? What? 'Fore George, you bewilder me with your list of tortures. But how am I to be sure that a bird feels as you say?" "It is As enough that you know nothing certain. you are not sure, you have no right to hazard the injustice, especially as you cannot help being sure of one thing; which is, that birds have flesh and blood like ourselves, and that they afford similar evidences of feeling and suffering. Allow me to read you a passage that I cut the other day out of an old review. It is taken from Fothergill's Essay on the Philosophy, Study, and Use of Natural History; a book which I shall make acquaintance with as soon as I can. Here it is. 66 "It may perhaps be said, that a discourse on the iniquity and evil consequences of murder would come with a bad grace from one who was himself a murderer, and so it would: but not if it came from the lips of a repentant murderer. Who can describe that which he has not seen, or give utterance to that which he has not felt? Never shall I forget the remembrance of a little incident which occured to me during my boyish daysan incident which many will deem trifling and unimportant, but which has been particularly interesting to my heart, as giving origin to sentiments, and rules of action, which have since been very dear to me.-Besides a singular elegance of form and beauty of plumage, the eye of the common lapwing is peculiarly soft and expressive: it is large, black, and full of lustre, rolling, as it seems to do, in liquid gems of dew. I had shot a bird of this beautiful species; but, on taking it up, I found that it was not dead. I had wounded its breast; and some big drops of blood stained the pure whiteness of its feathers. As I held the hapless bird in my hand, hundreds of its companions hovered around my head, uttering continued shrieks of distress, and, by their plaintive cries, appeared to bemoan the fate of one to whom they were connected by ties of the most tender and interesting nature; whilst the poor wounded bird continually moaned, with a kind of inward wailing note, expressive of the keenest anguish; and, ever and anon, it raised its drooping head, and turning towards the wound in its breast, touched it with its bill, and then looked up in my face with an expression that I have 'Admits and leaves them Providence's care'Does he? You remember the passage, Jack, in Pope : "God cannot love (cries Blunt with tearless eyes): "But we are Providence, Jack-nay, don't start: I mean that our own feelings, our own regulated feelings and instructed benevolence, are a part of the general action of Providence, a consequence and furtherance of the Divine Spirit. You see I can preach as well as Bilson. Humanity is the most visible putting forth of the Deity's hand; the noblest tool it works with. Or if this theology doesn't serve, recollect the fable of Jupiter and the Waggoner. Are we content with abstract references to Providence, when we can work out any good for ourselves, or save ourselves from any evil? Did Bilson wait for Providence to induct him to his living? Did he not make a good stir about it himself? Push him into a ditch the next time you meet him, and see if he will not Leave him to get out bustle to get out of it. by himself, and see if he does not think you a hard-hearted fellow. Wing him, Jack, wing him; and see if he'll apply to Providence or a I surgeon.". "Eh? that would be famous. say—I must be going though; it's getting dark, and I must be in town by nine. Well, Harry, my boy, good-by. I can't say you've convinced me; you know I told you I wasn't to be convinced; but I plainly confess I don't like the story of the lapwing; it makes the bird look like a sort of human creature; and that's not to be resisted. So I'm taken in about lapwings. Adieu." "Well, Jack, you shall say that in print, and perhaps do more good than you are aware. Have you any objection?" "Not I, 'faith; I'd say it any where, if it came into my head.-But how? In the Sporting Magazine?" |