31 



hood accepted as orthodox concerning the luisdom of 

 ants and the (economy of bees, but most of all, con- 

 cerning the endowments which we are accustomed to 

 admire in the higher animals. Why love a dog better 

 than a watch, asks the Jesuit Bugeant, if we did not 

 believe the dog had a heart, and a mind, and was capable 

 of reciprocity of affection. But, to indulge in a mo- 

 ment's digression from the affair in hand, not only, my 

 dear Jesuit ! do nuns love canaries ; not only do the 

 Lesbias of all ages exhibit red eyes, and exact elegies 

 when tame sparrows die, but such are the imperative 

 besoins du cceur, that revolting things, and inanimate, become 

 indisputable objects of attachment, for want of something 

 better. The inmates of the dungeon have been glad to 

 court the society of the spider ; sailors become impas- 

 sioned in reciting the wreck of their favourite ship ; and 

 oh ! with what saddening delight does the man of a few 

 years' standing, revisit the scenes of his youth I with 

 what emotion would he interrogate the trees, those silent 

 witnesses of early affections, or still earlier ventures ! 

 how he gazes on the still crumbling, still resisting bank 

 of some unsung stream, to him worth all the 



rura, quae Liris quieta 



Mordet aqua, tacilurnus amnis 



And grasps, alas, it is with hands of full stature ! the 

 trusty and rusty chain which he has so often furtively 

 loosed from its moorings I All this, it may be said, is from 

 early association ; it shows however, my dear Jesuit, that 

 our hearts do not in all their pursuits exact reciprocity, nor 

 needs there the eloquence of a Tully to assure us, that now 

 modo in Jioc, quod est animal, sed in Us efiam, quce sunt inani- 

 mata, consuetude valet. 



And it must, I conjecture, my equally dear reader 1 be 

 somewhere about this passage that you will come upon 

 me with an overwhelming question " What do I mean to 



