Talk while you may, you will hold your breath Ho! ho! for the merry merry show! The ancients believed that great enmity existed between the hippopotamus and the crocodile; and that they bear no very good will to each other may be very possible; but near neighbours as they are, dangerous enough perhaps, Nature has so provided for them, offensively and defensively, that they, most probably, maintain an armed neutrality. The hippopotamus did not escape the medical practitioners of old. Pliny and others show how it enriched the pharmacopoeia. We spare our readers the various prescriptions, merely observing, that the teeth were famous against the toothache, and that the mother who could procure some of the brain had only to rub the gums of her infant with it to deliver the poor dear baby from the torments of teething. We must not omit that the animal was considered a master of the art of healing, from his alleged habit of letting blood by pressing the vein of his leg against a sharp stake, or stout, broken, sharp-pointed reed, when his constitution required it. If we are so fortunate as to overcome the difficulties of rearing and of the passage, and lodge the young hippopotamus, now sojourning in Egypt, safely in the Regent's Park, how different will the spirit of the British people who will crowd to see it be from that with which the sanguinary Romans, high and low, beheld the same form! We shall have the privilege of peaceably enjoying the sight of this peaceable animal, anxious, in its uncouth way, to show its good will to those who show good will to it, instead of lusting for the terrible excitement of the amphitheatre. Commodus, on one occasion, exhibited five; and descending into the arena butchered some of these wretched beasts with his own imperial hand. Queen Victoria, accompanied by her consort and their children, the hopes of Britain, will graciously look upon the unmolested creature. April, 1850. 69 CHAPTER V. JOHN IN JONSTON, quoting Robertus de Monte, remarks, that 'in the yeer 1125 the winter was so violent, that innumerable eels in Brabant, by reason of the ice, went forth of the lake, which is strange, and got into hay-ricks, and lay hid there, till by extream cold they rotted away. And the trees at last had scarce any leaves put forth in May.' The eels might as well have staid patiently in their lake waiting for better times, as we must for milder weather. Whether the May of 1850 is to be like the May in 1125, is a problem yet to be solved; but I write on the 28th March, after a bitter easterly-wind-blowing month of it, with the snow on the ground, the sun shining, and the searching, biting, blasting wind in the old quarter. There was thick ice yesterday on the water in St. James's Park. The dryness, for weeks, has almost equalled that which afflicted Italy in the 322nd year after the building of Rome, and we have had dust more than enough to ransom a heptarchy of kings. So pressed for food were the blackbirds, in consequence of the drought, that they ate off the grass of the pinks and carnations, making them look as if that plant-cutting bird the Phytotoma,* or the rodent rabbit, * Phytotoma rara. The Chilian Plant-cutter. It lives on plants, which it cuts off close to the root, and often shears off many more than it wants, leaving them on the ground, as if it did the mischief from caprice. The peasants consequently employ every method in their power for its destruction, and rewards are given to children who take their eggs. Molina describes the bird as about the size of a quail, with a rather large bill, half an inch in length, conical, straight, a little pointed, and serrated. had been at them. The crocuses look pinched with cold, and keep their petals closed, though the sun's rays court them, as if in mockery, to expand. But if Phoebus bears the nuptial torch of the diurnal flowers, without the aid of Zephyrus, the loves of the plants are checked. The buds bide their time snugly wrapped up in their varnished coats; but still nature gives signs of vegetable life. The daffodils begin to peer,'-daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; and the primrose and violet brave the severity of the season from their lowly but sheltered retreats. After all, the time has been genial when compared with the springs of 1771 and 1838, though the impatience with which many of us regard that fixture, the weathercock, day after day, can hardly be wondered at. But could we order things for the better in the long run? A distinguished philosopher and poet,* indeed, remarks, that the suddenness of the change of the wind from north-east to south-west seems to show that it depends on some minute chemical cause, which, if it was discovered, might probably, like other chemical causes, be governed by human agency, such as blowing up rocks by gunpowder, or extracting the lightning from the clouds. If, adds the Doctor, this could be accomplished, it would be the most happy discovery that ever has happened to these northern latitudes, since in this country the north-east winds bring frost, and the southwest winds are attended with warmth and moisture; and he argues, that if the inferior currents of air could be kept perpetually from the south-west supplied by new productions of air at the line, which he makes the officina aëris for this supply, or by superior currents flowing in a contrary direction, the vegetation in this country would * Darwin. be doubled, as in the moist African valleys which know no frost; the numbers of its inhabitants would be increased, and their lives prolonged; for a great abundance of the aged infirm of mankind, as well as many birds and animals, are destroyed by severe continued frosts in this climate. And thus man proposes. See what he would do if he had the direction of the clerk of the weather-office! Our poetic philosopher, however, omits to tell us how he would dispose of the superfluous population of long-livers in this Eden, or how the tropical temperature would suit hyperborean constitutions. In such a paradise, threescore would be no burden, and all the gay grandsires would frisk as in the celebrated Herefordshire May dance, in which figured eight chosen men, 'whose ages counted together made eight hundred yeers compleat, so that what one wanted of a hundred, the other exceeded a hundred as much.' Our noble ladies would emulate 'the Countesse of Desmond, who lived in the yeer 1589, and after she married in the dayes of Edward the fourth; Verulam saith, she thrice renewed her teeth, and lived a hundred and fourty yeers.' * : All this looks charming upon paper, but, depend upon it, the winds are best in the hand of the Great Anemo * Jonston, 1657: who adds, Epimenides of Crete lived 150 yeers; Gorgias Siculus, a rhetorician, 108; Hippocrates, 114; Terentia, wife of Cicero, 103; Clodia, daughter of Ofilius, 115, though when she was young she had borne fifteen children. What shall I say of Luceia or Galeria Copiola? She lived not a little more than a hundred yeers; for it is reported that for a hundred yeers she played the jester upon the stage: it may be, at first she acted the maid's part, and at last an old wive's. Isra, the player and dancer, was in her youthfull dayes brought upon the stage: how old she was then is not known, but after 99 yeers from that time she was again brought upon the Theater, not to act her part, but to be showed as a miracle; when Pompey the Great dedicated the Theatre. Also she was again shewed at the sports |