LORD ERSKINE'S " FARMER'S VISION." XXvii. 



How can his vengeance thus be hurl'd 

 Against his favourite lower world ? 

 A sentence he must blush to see 

 Without a summons or a plea ; 

 E'en in his proudest, highest times, 

 He ne'er had cognizance of crimes, 

 And shall he now, with such blind fury, 

 In flat contempt ofjudge and jury, 

 Foul murder sanction in broad day, 

 Not on the King's but God's highway ?" 



Touch'd with the sharp but just appeal, 

 Well turn'd at least to make me feel, 

 Instant this solemn oath I took — 

 No hand shall rise against a Rook" 



I can afford no farther room for quotation from this humane 

 poem; but in a note, page 22, after having quoted some lines 

 from Cowper's Task, (three of which may be seen in page 

 283), his lordship observes " The whole subject of humanity to 

 animals is so beautifully and strikingly illustrated in this ad- 

 mirable poem (the Task), that no parents ought to be satisfied 

 until their children have that part of it by heart." 



Whether this production of his lordship be published hereafter 

 in a separate form or not, it is to be hoped, at any rate, that 

 those who may be collectors of his lordship's writings will take 

 care that the Farmer's Vis'on is preserved amongst them." 



Page 17J. The author saw a beautiful specimen of the 

 Alcedo ispida, or Common King-Fisher, on the banks of the 

 Ravensbourne, between Bromley and Beckenham, in Sept* 

 1827; it was actively on the wing, and darted out from beneath 

 the bridge over which passes the public road. 



He is disposed to think, that he saw the Nightingale, too, in a 

 hedge near Lewisham, towards the latter end of August ; but the 

 shyness of this bird renders its identification, without its song, 

 in such a situation, difficult. 



Page 175, line 17, after Grosbeak read Haw-Grosbeak. 



