46 The Canary. 



reverse of all this is the case, we shall be simply stating 

 the truth, as our readers will gather from the description 

 and illustration already before them. The Belgian, in- 

 stead of being, as this author describes them, " anything 

 but elegant in form and carriage," is, on the contrary, 

 extremely and necessarily elegant, not only in the out- 

 line of his figure, but when animated or excited also 

 in the bearing of his carriage. Drawing a line from 

 the point of his beak, over the crown of his head, taking 

 in the curve of his neck, and the rise of his shoulders, 

 and proceeding down his back to the tip end of his tail, he 

 presents a series of curves as nearly as possible approach- 

 ing to that waving line of beauty which Hogarth, in his 

 ideal of elegance, sketched upon his palette. View him 

 as you will, from above or below, from his shoulders or 

 his chest, the lines become " fine by degrees and beau- 

 tifully less," utterly forbidding any loop-hole of escape 

 in the oft-repeated but false dictum that, after all, 

 '^ such things are a mere matter of taste." Beauty of 

 form indeed is a matter of taste, but not of fanciful 

 taste or mere whim and caprice, and is as much 

 regulated by well-defined and well-understood laws as 

 any which regulate any other matter of art or science. 

 Had the writer in question, however, stopped here, no 

 great harm would have been done, as people in this 

 matter could judge for themselves ; but when he goes 

 on to say that '^they are, however, strong healthy 

 birds," he says that which is the reverse of true, and 

 which, in the nature of things, is calculated to lead 

 people astray. So far from their being anything of the 

 kind, I believe every bird- dealer in the kingdom who 



