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truthfulness to nature. As you depart from that you 
fail in true art. Leaving out the fact that whatever 
is based upon cruelty is vulgar, look at the birds you 
wear, they are out of place in any case, but see them 
with their necks broken, their legs twisted into all 
sorts of impossible shapes, their feathers dyed with 
all sorts of flashy colours, nay, worse than that, the 
head of one sort of bird stuck on to the body of 
another sort, and the legs of another. Nothing 
could be more hideous, nothing more glaringly vul¬ 
gar. Where is your taste ? Where your refinement ? 
Are your resources so miserably low that you cannot 
invent colours and materials without killing the birds, 
and then waste your brains in trying to make a bird 
out of a number of others ? And what do you make ? 
'—Simply a monstrosity ! Do you doubt what I say ? 
In the Newcastle Chronicle appeared a short time ago, 
an engraving taken from objects actually seen in 
Newcastle. I give you one or two. No i, an owl’s 
head, a tern, and a chimney swallow. No. 2, bee- 
eater, sandpiper, &c. No. 3, bee-eater and warbler. 
There were others, but it is enough. Look at the 
wings of beautiful birds, as they appear in shop 
windows, dotted here and there with beads and bits 
of bright metal, and ask yourselves, “ Is this art ? ” 
Could anything be more tawdry — anything more 
vulgar ? As Harrison Weir, to whom we owe so 
much for his beautiful illustrations of birds, has said, 
“ Better use cocks’ combs, heads and necks ; the 
family jester used to wear them ! Who are they,” 
he continues, “ what are they, who go simpering 
forth in flowing robes, trimmed with humming birds’ 
wings and throat feathers, with here a wing and 
there a dazzling ruby breast among bits of lace, bits 
of ribbon, while high amid their frizzled, curled, and 
pomatumed hair (if dark) a yellow canary is kept in 
order by jewelled pins on a jewelled nest?” Yes, 
well may he ask, Who are they? Ladies ! are they 
Christian ladies who kneel at the feet of the God of 
