CHARLES WATERTON AS A NATURALIST. 



47 



revenge against tfie Lords of the 

 Treasury, he tells us ; " In fine, it 

 is this ungenerous treatment that 

 has paralysed my plans [robbed 

 him of his available means, so that 

 he could not print an additional 

 dozen pages of MS. ?] and caused 

 me to give up the idea I once had 

 of inserting here the newly-discov- 

 ered mode of preparing quadrupeds 

 and serpents." When he found 

 that the public classed other matters 

 in his Wanderings with the nonde- 

 script, there was no end to his scold- 

 ing, and almost cursing, every one 

 who even presumed to differ from 

 him. There was so little tact and 

 sense, self-respect and good-breed- 

 ing manifested at the outset of his 

 public career, at the mature age of 

 forty-three years, and so much that 

 was capricious and whimsical, that 

 little room was left for the display or 

 development of that principle and 

 judgment which, sooner or later, 

 command the respect or confidence 

 of the world. 



Any prejudice Waterton may 

 have met with on account of being 

 a Romanist of " many centuries 

 standing " he owed to himself, for 

 the reason that he proclaimed him- 

 self such in an unusual and uncalled- 

 for manner, and as having had his 

 mind manipulated from his infancy 

 by the Jesuits a set of men as of- 

 fensive to humanity at large, even 

 when they come in the garb of 

 " angels of light," as obnoxious 

 animals are to a barn-yard, where 

 everything having a horn in its 

 head will stick it into them. Not- 

 withstanding the eulogium he pass- 

 ed upon them, as the embodiment of 

 the humane and Godlike virtues, he 

 could not have objected to his own 

 language being applied to them 

 when he wrote : " It is said, if you 

 give a dog a bad name, whether in- 

 nocent or guilty, he never loses it. 

 It sticks close to him wherever he 

 goes. He has many a kick and 

 many a blow to bear on account of 

 it." By his own admission, con- 



stantly gloried in, he was a black 

 Romanist, dyed in the wool, and 

 doubtless a lay Jesuit, who believed 

 in everything of the system as ab- 

 solutely as the most ignorant and 

 blinded devotee, native or foreign ; 

 and whose particular aversion was 

 for the " Hanoverian Rats," with a 

 " God rest the soul of Charles 

 Stuart." As a naturalist, he seems 

 to have been testy and easily 

 " riled," as well as spiteful and re- 

 vengeful, self-engrossed and illogi- 

 cal, and in the highest degree prag- 

 matical and dogmatical, presumpt- 

 uous and arrogant, in matters with 

 which he was evidently little con- 

 versant. He says, in writing to 

 George Ord, of Philadelphia, when 

 seventy-three years old : " We 

 bird-stuffers are a very low set, very 

 jealous of each other, and excessive- 

 ly prone to anger and defamation ;" 

 which, like most of his opinions, 

 must be received with a good deal 

 of question or qualification. He 

 was constantly abusing what he 

 called " closet naturalists," who drew 

 their information from books, as an 

 illiterate man abuses newspapers, 

 and sneered at ^ market naturalists " 

 as if they were kitchen gardeners ; 

 while in many of his lucubrations he 

 sunk below both, drawing his infor- 

 mation, not from books or the con- 

 versations of observers, but from his 

 imagination, or the " depth of his 

 consciousness " occult attributes, 

 very difficult of defining or depend- 

 ing on. Witness, for example, his 

 singular remarks and crude specu- 

 lations about snakes, skunks, wolves, 

 dogs, the food of animals, and sun- 

 stroke.* 



* There runs through Waterloo's Works 

 a marked aversion to what he called a 

 "closet naturalist," whom he seems to 

 have consideied as a natural enemy ; but 

 he did not define exactly what he meant 

 by the term. Taking one view of the 

 question, it could doubtless be said that 

 he would have called him a closet natu- 

 ralist who quoted himself against him- 

 self, in any variation or vagary he might 

 have fallen into in his writings. 



