grand and stormy-looking depression of the eyelid, drawn with that sidelong air of tightness, fierceness, and threat, as if by the brush of some mighty painter. That is an eye for the clouds and the subject earth, not for a miserable hen-coop. And see, poor flagging wretches! how they stand on their perches, each at a little distance from one another, in poor stationary exhibition, eagles all of a row!-still, scratchy, impaired, useless-eyed, almost motionless? Are these the majestic and sovereign creatures described by the Buffons and Mudies, by the Wilsons of ornithology and poetry, by Spenser, by Homer? Is this the eagle of Pindar, heaving his moist back in sleep upon the sceptre of Jove, under the influence of the music of the gods? Is this the bird of the English poet, Soaring through his wide empire of the air, Wonderful and admirable is the quietness, the philosophy, or whatever you choose to call it, with which all the creatures in this place, the birds in particular, submit themselves to their destiny. They do not howl and cry, brutes though they be; they do not endeavour to tear their chains up, or beat down their dens; they find the contest hopeless, and they handsomely and wisely give it up. It is true, their wants are attended to as far as possible, and they have none of the more intolerable wants of self-love and wounded vanity-no vindictiveness seemingly, nor the love of pure obstinate opposition, and of seeing whose will can get the day. If they cannot have liberty, they will not disgrace captivity. But then what a loss to them is that of liberty! It is thought by some that all which they care for is their food; and that, having plenty of this, they must be comfortable. But feeding, though a pleasure of life, is not the end of it; it is only one of its pleasurable supports. Or grant it even to be one of the ends of life, as indeed it may be considered by reason of its being a pleasure, more especially with some animals (not excepting some human ones), still, consider what a far greater portion of existence is passed by all creatures in the exercise of their other faculties, in some form of motion (so much so, that even food would seem not so much an object of the labour, as a means of it-life itself being motion in pulse and thought), and then think of how much of the very spirit of their existence all imprisoned creatures are deprived. The truth is, that if a man has happened, by the circumstances of his life, to think and endure much-to enjoy much, and to know what it is to be deprived of enjoyment-and, above all, to know what this very 66 Gray's translation, “ Perching on the sceptred hand," &c., is very fine; but he has omitted this exquisite epithet of the eagle's sleep, moist (vygov), so full of the depth of rest and luxury. Gilbert West's version of the passage has merit, but he wanted gusto enough to venture on this epithet. Cary (thanks to his Dantesque pen!) has not dishonoured it. "Jove's eagle on the sceptre slumbers, Drops, intranced, the feather'd king; Aug.-VOL. XLVII. NO. CLXXXVII. CARY'S Pindar, p. 62. 2 L want of liberty is, this confinement for a long time to one spot, the sight of these Gardens ends in making him more melancholy than comfortable. Hating to interfere with other people's pleasures, or to seem to pretend to be wiser or better than my neighbours (especially when speaking, as circumstances render expedient, in my own name), I did not well know how to get this truth out of my lips; till seeing the interesting article in the "Quarterly Review" on the same subject, and finding the writer confessing that he could never pass by these eagles " without a pang," I felt that I might protest against the whole business of captivity with the less hazard of a charge of immodesty and selfopinion. Let me not be understood as implying blame against any one. I have the greatest respect for the persons and motives of the gentlemen who compose the Zoological Society, and who have (as already hinted) given a prodigious lift, in the scale of comfort, to creatures destined to shows and menageries. Their zeal in behalf of the general interests of knowledge and humanity is, I have no doubt, fervid; and their defence, in the present instance, is obvious, and perhaps unanswerable. If they did not take charge of animals for exhibition, others would, and would do it badly; and the old system would return. There would be no such handsome places any longer for the prisoners as the Marylebone and Surrey gardens. Granted. I am only restoring the principle to its element, or pushing the abstract defence of the whole system to its utmost, and trying whether it would stand the test of a final judgment, if action were free, and prohibition could be secured; and, under these circumstances I may ask, not uselessly even for present purposes, whether a great people, under a still finer aspect of knowledge and civilization than at present, would think themselves warranted in keeping any set of fellow-creatures in a state of endless captivity-their faculties contradicted, their very lives, for the most part, turned into lingering deaths? Every now and then the lions, and other animals in these places, disappear. They die off from some malady or other, either of inactivity, or of other contradiction to their natures, or from the soil or climate. The "Quarterly Review" thinks that the London clay is pernicious to the collection in Marylebone Gardens. The Surrey collection, it seems, though the smaller, is the healthier. But how long do the animals last there? Or is captivity a good thing for them. anywhere? The main arguments in favour of such collections are, that they increase the stock of knowledge, encourage kindly feelings towards the lower creation, and tend to substitute rational for irrational amusements. They who object to them are warned furthermore how they render the * "But we must bend our steps to the eagle-house, and we confess we never pass it by without a pang. Eagles, laemergyers, condors, creatures of the element, born to soar over Alps and Andes, in helpless, hopeless imprisonment. Observe the upward glance of that golden eagle-ay, look upon that glorious orb-it shines wooingly how impossible is it to annihilate hope!-he spreads his ample wings, springs towards the fountain of light, strikes the netting, and flaps heavily down :-'Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch 'entrate.' We know not what their worships would say or do to us, if we were to work our wicked will; but we never see these unfortunates without an indescribable longing to break their bonds, and let the whole bevy of these wander free." 'Souls made of fire and children of the sun' imagination over-nice and sensitive, or make worse what cannot be helped; and something is occasionally added respecting the perplexed question of good and evil, and the ordinances of Providence. I have not room to repeat what has been often said in answer to reasonings of this description, which, in truth, are but so many beggings of the question, all of them to be set aside till the first doubts of the manliest and most honest conscientiousness be disposed of. Providence is to be adored at all times, and its mysteries to be brought in, humbly, when man comes to the end of his own humble endeavours; but till then it is not his business to play with the awful edge-tools of a right of providential force, and its mixture of apparent evil. He must do what his conscience tells him, all kindly, and nothing (where he can help it) with a mixture of unkindness; and thus I know not how a conscientious naturalist, setting aside that argument, that others will do worse, would be able, if nations were to come to such a pitch of refinement as above stated, to do the evil of imprisoning and withering away the lives of his fellow animals, that some problematical good might come. A paragraph in the newspaper the other day, speaking of a lion that died after three years' incarceration, (one in four of its whole life,) said, that the Zoological Society have "never been able to keep any of the larger carnivora longer than that time; they have lost (it adds) nine lions since January, 1832." It is not easy to reconcile this statement to others which tell us of tens and twenties of years passed by lions and other beasts under the like circumstances. Imprisonments of that duration have been known in the Tower and other places-jails far less favourable, one would think, to the lives of the inmates, than these open and flowery spots. The Society's catalogue informs us that the grisly bear in their possession "was brought to England upwards of twenty years since by the Hudson's Bay Company," and that it remained in the Tower till the accession of his present Majesty; and their harpy eagle was caught in 1822. Long life in a prison, however, is a very different thing from natural life out of it. At ail events, on the principle of doing the very best possible, would it not be desirable, nay, is it not imperative on societies possessed of funds, to enlarge even the better accommodation they have provided, to give elephants and giraffes still greater ranges, and, above all, to supply far better dens to the lions and tigers, &c., for dens they still are, of the narrowest description? WORDS FOR A TRIO. AN argument like a good trio should be L. H. THE NAVAL HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN*. If we reflect upon the magnitude and grandeur of our navy-that it is the source of our power, wealth, security, and fame-that it ever has been the pride and favourite of the nation—and that its deeds of enterprise and valour, as well as its fortitude under sufferings, are pre-eminently susceptible of all the beauty and sublimity by which narrative and description can elevate the mind and rouse the passions-we may not escape astonishment at the very little that the higher branches of literature have done upon such a subject. In fact, most of our works upon naval history and biography have been written by landsmen, who have not been able to imbibe a sailor's spirit or the peculiarities of a sailor's feelings, and they have described feebly or obscurely what they have been barely able to understand by dint of toil and trouble. Hume, the historian, confessed, that whatever pains he took, he never could comprehend a naval battle; and considering the manner in which actions between single ships, squadrons, and fleets have often been described (especially in the days of manoeuvres and tactics), we are not surprised that they should have baffled the comprehension of perhaps the most acute and lucid intellect of his age and country. But we have arrived at a different era, and we have now before us a standard work of Naval History, comprising a period more replete with science, more full of great and glorious deeds, and more illustrative of all the resources and energies of powerful and heroic minds, than any other period of five times the duration in the naval annals of this or of any other country, either in the ancient or modern world. From the year 1793 to the battle of Trafalgar or Algiers, naval affairs were conducted upon a scale and with a spirit which no future conjuncture of circumstances will probably ever produce; Captain Brenton has drawn these with a master's hand. The work impresses us with the science and skill of a veteran officer, and we have its lucid pages glowing with the seaman's spirit, patriotism, and feelings. A mere naval history, however, with whatever talents or in whatever spirit it may be written, would, upon the whole, be an uninstructive work. A perpetual and unrelieved account of battles can afford to the mind only a coarse stimulus and gratification, which soon exhausts attention, and eventually occasions the worst species of satiety. Such books, like the "Newgate Calendar," are merely an excitement to youth or the resource of the illiterate and vulgar. Captain Brenton judiciously avoids this evil, and the plan of his work merits unequivocal praise, and places it far above all competition. The author connects our naval affairs with the general history of the country and of Europe. Our campaigns and battles on the ocean are therefore not isolated events, but parts and parcels of the general warfare. We trace them in connexion with the causes, conduct, and objects of the war, with the avowed or secret designs of cabinets and negotiations, so that the work has not only all the merits of a strictly naval history, but its parts combine into a succinct, but comprehensive, lucid, and most interesting history of the affairs of the belligerent nations, with their effects upon neutral powers and upon the general interests of mankind. This plan renders the work one of the most entertaining and useful productions of the age; but it will be our duty presently to point out several errors in the filling-up of the outline. We recollect that when Captain Brenton first published his "Naval History," in 1823, the work occasioned a very powerful sensation throughout the military and naval services, and created a strong impression on the public mind in general. Few books incurred more censure or received more praise. Unfortunately, however, in our opinion at the time, an opinion which the public have at length confirmed and adopted, the work was The Naval History of Great Britain, brought down to the Present Time. By Capt. Edward Pelham Brenton, R.N. strongly blamed for its very best points of excellence, whilst it received the most extravagant praise for its worst and least pardonable defects. The extent of the history, with its very high price, confined its circulation to the richer classes; but as it received probably more public patronage than any work under similar circumstances had received for a very long period, we felt surprised that the gallant officer did not supply the country with an edition in which the errors of the first might be expunged, and which might be brought within the reach of more humble pockets. This desideratum is at length supplied, but not altogether without defects, which we shall feel it our duty to point out. Some few of the original sins still remain; others are much modified and softened; and others, we are happy to say, are omitted and atoned for; and we shall point out the first two classes, in the hopes that there may be no detraction from the merits of this excellent work in the future numbers. We have stated that Captain Brenton's original work was strongly blamed or reproached for points that constituted its greatest merits, and that it was as extravagantly praised for its greatest defects. This position, amounting almost to a paradox, it will now be our task to establish. The gallant author is evidently an enthusiast in his profession. His love and zeal for the service know no bounds, and he never takes his pen in his hand without showing that he is embued with an ardent spirit of patriotism, and with a devoted loyalty, both of which, however, have that peculiar tinge which is derived from a naval life. Captain Brenton, moreover, under all circumstances is influenced by a spirit of veracity, and from these various causes he was induced to tell many truths of a most unpleasant nature; and hence were his writings and himself blamed by all who had, or had had, or who hoped to have a participation in systems that injured the public service to the advantage of private individuals. In the true spirit of history, and with feelings most highly to his honour, this gallant officer exposed the scandalous practice of hiring merchant vessels at an enormous rate of tonnage, under the pretext of using them as transports, when they were allowed to lie idle in port, the real object being to enrich owners who were of a certain set of political opinions. Next came a by far more flagitious and cruel species of corruption. Whilst the impress service was inflicted upon all classes, with a barbarity almost incredible in these days, and whilst, by dint of high bounties and pardons for crimes, our navy, at the most awful and critical juncture of affairs, was receiving convicts from the hulks, and the sweepings of wretches from the jails and haunts of infamy in London and our large towns, hundreds of the finest seamen, that possessed votes in boroughs, were protected from serving in the navy, and allowed, at the very gasp of our existence, to idle their lives away on board of packets or vessels serving or only nominally serving on the coast or in ports and harbours. Surely nothing could have been more culpable in an historian than concealing these facts. Our gallant author also pointed out the execrable supply of our fleets with provisions, stores, and, above all, with ammunition-gunpowder, for instance, either adulterated or deficient in quantity. The needless severity of punishment was exposed, and a humane sentiment was uttered at the judicial butcheries of our veteran seamen for nominal mutinies, such as that at Bantry Bay, and at the executions at which the writer of this article had the misfortune to attend as an officer. Some animadversions were made upon the unequal distribution of prize-money, upon the unnecessary detention of ships upon foreign stations, upon the cruelty of keeping the pay of seamen so long in arrear, and upon the abuses in general which rendered the mutiny at Spithead almost unavoidable. Another highly honourable instance of candour and veracity was the exposure of the fraudulent system of misrating our ships, by which in all actions and battles we made it appear that we had overcome a vastly superior force, whereas, in numerous instances, directly the reverse was the fact. Great as was the honour due to Captain Brenton for thus pointing out |