hunted over ploughed fields to form a ring, merely for the formal exhibition of a scarecrow law? Will he give notice of a motion for enabling himself and me to see the next fight, in some commodious public building in London hired for the occasion, surrounded by every convenience and every comfortable appliance?

BURIED ABOVE-GROUND.

GENERALLY speaking, Mr. Murray is a very trustworthy guide. At all events, he inspires British tourists with a furor for seeing, and a taste for appreciating works of art and wonders of nature, for climbing mountains, and traversing glaciers, which is highly commendable, and creditable to their character as Englishmen. But there are still a few unknown recesses, which are revealed only to the earnest art-student, the curious antiquarian, or the favoured child of chance and adventure. Many of these choice nooks are yet to be found in the old historic towns of Flanders. There is a quaint old fountain up that dingy alley, a strange old sign upon yonder Spanish-built house, and thereto hangs a tale of genius, or crime, or heroism, or a romance of love, that may be gathered from the lips of the aged woman who sits at her spinning beneath it.

At one end of a certain lace-making town in Flanders aforesaid, and spanning one of the principal streets of that town, stands a portcullised gateway, flanked by two picturesque pointed towers, grey, sombre, and massive, a relic of the old feudal times. One longs for a man-at-arms, with halberd and cuirass, instead of the shako'd grenadier who paces up and down beneath its shadow.

So up I climbed, eager to discover what manner of man inhabited this gloomy pile. I passed into another chamber, similar to the one I had left below; no sign of life from an owl to a reasonable soul with human flesh subsisting! Suddenly some dark steps, leading in the direction of one of the side towers, caught my eye. I mounted, and pushed open a massive door, that creaked and screamed upon its old hinges. It sounded like a chorus of goblins. I expected to come upon a troop of them dancing a war-dance, or playing pitch and toss with their own heads, and thought of Tam O'Shanter. But the goblins turned into busts and statues, plasters, casts, and marbles, Cupids and Madonnas, and pure flesh and blood, in the shape of a short, thickset man, in blouse, red fez, and slippers, with iron-grey hair and profusion of beard and moustache, who stood gazing quietly at me with bright, piercing eyes.

With the uncomfortable bashfulness of a trespasser who feels that he has no business at all to be where he is, I stood irresolute whether to advance or turn and fly. The frank welcome of the solitary being in a moment placed me at my ease. He begged me to enter, and began at once to draw my attention to the various objects of art grouped around, and seemed to evince no small gratification in exhibiting his chefsd'œuvre.

The studio was crowded on all sides with busts and models; here a wooden figure with movable joints, to indicate the various postures of the body and movements of the limbs; here a plaster-cast with rags depending from it, to serve as a model for the arrangement of drapery; here copies and casts from the life; groups in every stage of development; silent, still forms, fit inhabitants of this silent tower. I have often since pictured the grey-bearded sculptor sitting in the midst of his silent company in the lonely old pile.

The arch is narrow and deep. A waggon of hay, with its two fat amiable-looking Flemish horses, I once saw standing beneath it, sheltered from the rain, which a thunder-cloud was pelting down. I was resting there myself, and wonder- Once upon a time, every old nook had its ing how long it would take the bright gleam, alchemist, its philosopher, its star-gazer, its which dazzled the eye in the direction of Brus- wizard. Now we are too bustling and practical sels, to pass across the plain, and burst upon for such pursuits. Commerce is too unromanthe town of lace. The thunder rattled over- tic to bear them. Every old arch, or nook and head, like a discharge of arms, and there seemed corner, however ghostly and rich in associations, no hope of a clear sky. I was resolving to make is converted into a cellar or a warehouse. If the a rush for my hotel up the splashy street, when old Flemish sculptor lives long enough to see my glance rested on a wooden door in the side trade billet its conquering and swarming myrmiof the arch, with Atelier" in somewhat rude dons in the dull, drowsy, lace-making town, a characters chalked upon it. My curiosity was thousand to one he will have to evacuate, and excited. I squeezed by the waggon, opened the his tower will become the depôt of a brewer, or door, and entered. a photographic establishment.

66

I found myself in a low crypt. Nothing but a wooden staircase rewarded my scrutiny. This I mounted, and emerged into a large stone chamber, apparently extending the whole length of the arch and two side towers. The walls were of vast thickness, and the roof cryptal, like that of the chamber below. Suddenly I heard steps, and a boy came rapidly down some stairs from above. I asked him where I was, and he said, "In the studio." I feared that I was trespassing, but the amiable youth said that the genius of the place would be glad to see me.

After I had examined the beauties of the studio, he led the way nimbly up some rickety ladders, which total darkness, and ignorance of the locality, rendered extremely painful to mount. I could hear his steps rattling above my head as I slowly crawled up, occasionally knocking it against a beam, or squeezing through a hole in the rafters. I seemed in a perfect wilderness of ladders, all so old and infirm, that I feared the whole system would fall to pieces with our weight. Suddenly a stream of light poured down upon us, and we stood, directly, in a small

then another bookcase, containing Dutch and Flemish authors; a cabinet of mineralogy; a bookcase dedicated to "Les Beaux Arts;" a cabinet of aërolites. I sat down in a deep window, upon leopard skins, almost fatigued with the tour of observation, but astounded at the richness and universality of the artist's collection.

"What have you not got ?" said I.

"A wife," he answered. "But I'm wedded to my old tower and my books and my chisel instead."

I asked if he had always lived in the tower. He said that he had passed many years in Italy, that he had visited every country in Europe but England. "Then do you understand English ?” I inquired. Thoroughly, to read, but not to speak." He immediately snatched down a large volume, and displayed to my astonished gaze the Prize Catalogue of the Exhibition of 1851. He opened it, and pointed to the centre of a page. I stooped, and read my host's name in the list of honour; and as I looked up, he held the medal in his hand, and smiled with almost childlike pleasure and simplicity as he showed me the little bauble.

round chamber, with conical roof, the summit world. Next came a bookcase of German evidently of one of the flank towers. Round works; then a cabinet of chemical preparations; apertures had been cut in the sides and filled with glass, through which views of the surrounding country could be obtained in every direction. A bench had been constructed so as to command the finest prospect. Here my host would sit for hours of an evening, after his day's toil, puffing his long pipe, and watching the sun setting over the fair cities of Flanders. It was a grand sight. A wide, endless expanse of plain, as far as the eye could reach. Louvain and Brussels lay just below me; while Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, and many another distant old township, broke the horizon with its cluster of spires and towers, or sparkled in the watery sunshine, with its white houses and bright red roofs. I could have stayed long to enjoy the scene, and the thoughts suggested, and recollections stirred up by each variation of it, but I feared to exhaust the patience of my strange conductor. We descended, and he led me down to the second cryptal chamber that I had entered on my voyage of discovery. One end was separated from the rest by a plaster wall. He pushed open the door, and I found myself in an octagonal room, old and gloomy, but crowded with rich and quaint furniture. On the left of the door stood a dark oaken bookcase, devoted solely to English literature. My eye ran quickly from shelf to shelf, lighting upon the names of our best British authors, ranged chronologically, from Ben Jonson to Macaulay. The sculptor smiled at my expression of astonishment as I entered the room, and at once proceeded to initiate me into the mysteries thereof. He was singularly silent; what little he said was in French. I tried to elicit some of the facts of his own history, but he quietly changed the subject. A tall cabinet next arrested my attention. It was fitted, from carpet to cornice, with drawers, each containing choice specimens of conchology. Almost touching this stood a second bookcase, rich with the best and rarest French works; then a cabinet of geological specimens. Bookcases and cabinets entirely encircled the room, ranged alternately. We next examined a library of Italian authors; then a cabinet of various kinds of wood, polished and unpolished, and still another bookcase, the sacred repository of classical lore. He took thence quaint editions of Horace, Virgil, and Homer, and wondrous old MSS. that he had picked up in by-lanes in the Italian cities.

I found myself, at this moment, standing opposite the fireplace, one of those huge caverns that the old Flemings loved to dedicate to Vulcan. The iron ring, which many an old soldier had doubtless held while warming his feet at the great fire, still depended from the mantelpiece.

A large oaken chest next demanded inspection. It stood against the wall, reaching half way to the roof. It had evidently been used once as an ammunition chest. The ingenuity of the sculptor had converted it into a receptacle of rare prints, which he had collected from various parts of the

There were various other curiosities challenging attention, but I could not prolong my visit. As I pressed the hand of the lonely being, and hurried from his quaint abode, a confused image of bookcases, cabinets, oak-chests, pictures, skins, skeletons, musical instruments, statues, and old clothes flitted before my brain. When I stood in the street below, and saw men with modern coats and hats, women with bonnets, and a pretty English girl with crinoline and plumed hat passing along, I almost doubted my identity, and felt as I should fancy one of the old knights, who repose with folded arms in the Temple Church, would feel were he suddenly to awake when the men and women of A.D. 1860 are passing in to service.

Certainly, this lonely artist is no being of the modern day. He has no sympathy with it. He is but little known in the lace-making town. Scarcely a soul visits him from end to end of the year. He seldom leaves his grim old haunt. He wanders up and down the staircases and ladders, and sits contemplating the world from the top of his tower. If he needs companions, he has them in his books, and in his dumb creatures of stone and marble. They never tell tales, they never change; those that smile now do not frown to-morrow. They never die, the young among them are ever young, the beautiful among them ever beautiful. The child of his fancy, too, he can mould and chisel to his will, daily and hourly; there is no rebellious heart to conquer, no fierce passion to restrain, no ingratitude to disappoint and sour him. He sees it surely and steadily growing beneath his care, until at last it stands before him a spotless model.

The sculptor is an accomplished man. The tongue of no European people is strange to his

ear. Most languages seem native to him. Music he delights in, nor is his skill in performing contemptible. Literature is at once the necessary and the luxury of his life. Art he lives for, Solitude is the atmosphere he breathes. There are few more interesting spots in my memory than the old tower (herein faithfully drawn) in the old lace-making town in fair old Flanders.

OUR EYE-WITNESS AND A
SALAMANDER.

and with levity, about him, as a cat will look after summer flies, but your, servant would also call the attention of the society to the fact that this animal is in the habit of performing, on the near approach of his dinnerhour, a maniac dance, jumping over his com panion's back, and his companion over him, in a frantic sidelong leap-frog of anticipation, executed with incredible rapidity for a quarter of an hour before the victuals reach him. T for tiger is losing himself by this conduct, and unless he takes this word of advice from a friend, will gradually fall into contempt.

As he pays his money at the gate of the It is a wretched life for that Nubian lion London Zoological Gardens, the visitor who who is always looking off into that little bit of has retained that freshness which is one of the distance which is open to him at the end of the greatest of earthly blessings, is irresistibly taken terrace; it is a wretched life for him, and indeed back to his old childish days. The click of the for all these beasts, to have nothing to look for. turnstile that admits him, seems to have snipped ward to but their meat all the day long. No a score of years off his life, and, already sniffing adventure, no change of scene, no soft sand, no from afar that faint musty odour of exaggerated shady trees. There is a whole bookful of tesmousiness which pervades the place, he feels timony to the ennui of such a life in that wild that he is returning to the days of lessons and look "off" of the lion as he stands erect in his holidays, of a coercion whose strongest restric- strength. The same exploring glance into the tions were liberty itself to the restraints of furthest distance within range is observable, too, later life, and that he has entered a region of in his neighbour the tiger, who, that he may get wonder and delight, of lions, tigers, bears-and a yet greater extent of the Regent's Park within buns. Have we not, all, some cherished me- view, will raise himself to an enormous height mory of L for lion in the spelling-book, illus-on his hind-legs, propping himself with his foretrated by a small woodcut of an animal with a legs against the bars of his cage, and seeming human profile like that on a George the Third to stretch almost over one's head in a great arch shilling? The single huge dab of yellow, which of animal beauty. covered much more of the spelling-book than it did of the lion, was executed, if the reader remembers, with a fine hand, and gives one the idea that five thousand spelling-books were ranged in order before the artist, open at L, that five thousand yellow dabs were all done in a twinkling while the brush was wet, and that then the green brush was similarly called into play, to decorate that bush which is the only object that breaks the sandy desert on which the king of beasts is standing. Have we forgotten, either, T for tiger, or W for the wolf that killed Red Riding-Hood?

It is only in the noblest animals that this straining of the eyes into the distance is noticeable. You will not see it in the bear, or the wolf, or the hyæna, and one feels, therefore, the less for their captivity. These baser brutes either stupidly assent to their imprisonment, objecting to it with but a sullen resistance, as is the case with the bears, or fret and fuss under it without dignity, as the vile hyæna or the meanly trotting wolf. But the lion looks out into such distance as is within his ken, as the great feline group, and one other race to be presently noted, alone can look. Indeed, it is no Let us own, now we are grown up, that we are poetical fiction, no concession to conventionality, all unanimous on one subject—that we are all to call this creature the King of Beasts. His agreed that T for tiger should never sit down. dignity is too great to allow him to complain of He may lie down in any attitude he likes, he will that which he cannot help. He does not quarrel never do so in an ugly one. He may sprawl with his bars, but his life is one long protest about to his heart's content. He may stand, walk, against them. You have outwitted him, you or raise himself on his hind-legs, as much as he have, by superior numbers and by cunning, enchooses; but when he sits down, he looks like an trapped and caught him, but he has lost nothing ass, and the spectator loses all respect for him. It of his royalty by it. Lying down in weariness is probable that T for tiger has never been re--but not fatigue-pacing backwards and forpresented by a nobler specimen than the larger of the two now exhibited in the gardens of the Zoological Society, but when your Eye-witness saw him sitting down on his bed like a cat, and yawning, he felt that the magnificence of the beast was not proof against the effect of such behaviour, and that T for tiger was forgetting himself. Your servant would seriously advise the noble Society of Zoology to have a word with this member of their company, who is really making himself too cheap. Not only does he insist on sitting down and looking cheerfully,

wards, or, as has just been said, standing erect and gazing out over the world of London, he is still the same, and seems to say, like one who protested also against captivity of a different sort, "Come, come; I AM A KING, my masters, know you that?"

There is another state prisoner in this place, who has never yet made the best of his captivity, and who never will. It is the golden eagle. That straining of the gaze into the distance, is to be observed in this royal captive, almost in a more distinguishing degree than in the lion. See this

creature when his food is brought to him and flung into his cage. He does not even notice it. Perched on the highest attamable pinnacle of masonry within his reach, at the top of his cage, with his back to the quarter. from which the keeper approaches with his ready-slaughtered prey, he gazes out into a further distance than that within the lion's range of sight. He will gaze on it for half an hour together, revelling in this liberty of the eye, which is the only freedom left him, and neglecting the food which has been flung through his bars. What to him is this ready-slain flesh? He is not like his neighbours, the vultures, who desire nothing better than to have their prey killed for them. He would hunt it down and strike it for himself. Let the carrion lie there, he will fetch it when famine obliges him, and not before.

spised. He will come down to them when lie must, but while he can, he will still cry Excelsior! and press with eager longings against his prison bars. There are men like this: they are few and far between. The vultures, the apes, and the carrion crows outnumber them by thousands; but still there are eagles in the human world, and the vultures and the monkeys hate and fear them.

But if there is a lesson of industry in the ant that shall keep the teaching of the eagle from misleading us into a life of useless aspiration-if in the vulture there is a perpetual caution against a debased and sordid covetousness--then is the building which our zoological teachers have set apart for the apes and monkeys a perfect lecturehall against the smaller villanies to which humanity is prone-a pillory of warning to the These wrinkly-necked and scavenger vultures world. This is the head-quarters of Fuss. As proclaim, as most things do, their natures by you stand and watch one of the inhabitants of the their foul outside. How different are these from Temple of Irony-and in watching one you watch the eagles. The vulture is as large as the eagle. all, for they are all alike-you will be reminded The stretch of its wings is as vast. It stands every instant of the more fussy and important on high pinnacles of rock as the other does, but among your friends and acquaintances. Mark how it has not that steady, long-continuing gaze. It your monkey fidgets, how he hastens hither and is a degraded, hungry, devouring monster, that thither, always, as it seems, on important busihops and dances with joy when its barrow of ness, though it is only, perhaps, to fetch the flea flesh arrives, that tears the meat from the beak out of his partner's ear, or to steal a hazel-nut of the companion of its captivity, dropping its from his friend. Mark how he wrinkles his brow own portion to do so. The meat gets so co- and lifts his eyebrows, and looks about among vered with sand and gravel before these vultures his nut-shells, and among the hairs of his coat, have been long fighting for it, that you desire, for nothing, for he is an impostor, and seldom as you look, to take it from them and wash it. finds even a flea. Your Eye-witness has been There is something to be learned from the col-received by his friend Pumpcourt (whom he was lection in the Zoological Gardens. The melancholy foolish enough once to consult) with just such Jaques was ever twisting a moral out of the raising of the eyebrows; and P. would knock things he observed in creation. The sluggard is about the sham briefs upon his desk in hurried sent by Solomon to look at the industry of the search for documents which he knew did not ant, and we are taught elsewhere to unite the exist, exactly like this monkey. The ape looks wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of towards the door when it opens, with an expresthe dove. Who can look at these vultures tear- sion which distinctly says, "Is that the Solicitoring at each other's meat and dropping their own General, because, if it is, I want to have a word property in the attempt to snatch that of their with him." In all these things this animal neighbour-who can see this and not be re- resembles Pumpcourt, and many more fussy minded of what he has observed among certain friends. In holding out his hand (alas, it is human vultures, who will grasp and tear at some a hand) for your contribution to his keepsmall legacy which has fallen to a brother- but doing so with a wandering eye that is ever vulture, who will spend their substance in trying on the look-out to see if there is anybody in to keep him out of it, who will mar and defile the place better worth attending to your monthe coveted possession itself rather than let key reminds you still, of such members of your cousin-vulture or nephew-vulture or daughter-in-acquaintance as will talk to you till a richer law-vulture possess it intact. Fight on, ye wrynecked herd, pluck at the prizes you desire so much, pick at each other to get them, wrinkle your skins and make yourselves hideous in your thirst for gain, hop about that small property in impotent agonies of desire, but note the while that high above your heads there stands a creature at first sight like yourselves, but, in reality, as widely removed as Hyperion from a satyr. Look up at your king, and look with fear. His plumes are smooth, and there are no wrinkles in his neck. No lust of gain has lowered his head to be like yours, sunk in a high-shouldered stoop of greed. Why, look again: such wares as you are fighting for in sordid struggle lie at the bottom of his small domain, neglected and de

and more successful man enters the room, from which moment their attention wanders, and they answer you at random. But there is no end to this: in irritable tempers speedily excited, in fury about nothing, in furtive cunning, in every low, degrading, and indecent gesture and practice, these creatures "hold the mirror up" to all of us, and show the spectator of their hateful antics the things that he must most avoid. Indeed, this would almost seem the object of the monkey's existence, and while the nearness of his resemblance to the lower types of human physiognomy is terrible and humbling in the last degree, it is consolatory to think that in proportion as a man is a man he is removed the more from this detested comparison. The

savage with his contracted brow, and the Indian parrot, still more a cockatoo. He will entwine with his vile cunning and mean beggary, are near himself about his perch, keeping his eye upon enough to these monkeys to have satisfied Lord you, and making overtures of peace; he will Monboddo himself, and the Zoological Society, lean upon his beak and push himself along with as if to prove this, and, besides, to make their all his weight upon it, as if it were a skate; and collection complete, have got attached to the presently he will turn upside down and eye you service of young Prince or Princess Hippo- from beneath his perch, holding on by his grey potamus a "native," who seems, from a casual and wrinkled claws. Emboldened by these glance, to have all the qualities of the ape in little attentions, of which you are evidently the good development. He holds out his paw with object, and encouraged to fraternise with him grinning cries for halfpence to those who visit by these concessions on his part, you advance this department, and to ladies especially, grinning a hand to caress hira. In one instant-in and staring at them in a way that very offen-less-the lowly, courteous, wheedling creature sively carries out the resemblance that has been hinted above. Perhaps the members of this otherwise admirably conducted society are not aware of the proceedings of this one of their servants, and that a word of warning is very much required to prevent this swarthy gentleman from annoying the visitors to the gardens.

In commenting upon the manners of this apparently near relation of our poor relations the monkeys, we have insensibly got through to the other side of the tunnel, and we may as well, for the present, stop there; for it is the very essence of sight-seeing to set at nought the classification of guide-books, to take amusement, and instruction too, as it suggests itself, and to wander as one feels inclined from pillar to post, from the contemplation of a sea-anemone to that of a giraffe, and from the rat of the Thames to the hippopotamus of the Nile.

What length of acquaintance-what amount of familiarity ever diminishes our surprise at the giraffe? Is there some mechanical teaching in its structure that has never been yet discovered? We have found out the use of the elephant; can nothing be done with the giraffe, the largest and apparently the meekest of animals?

starts into a great white crest embodiment of rage, and screeches a yell of hatred into your very throat, performing volleys of indignant curtseyings the while, and revealing the dry interior of its grey mouth, with a hideous grey hammer inside it, which represents his tongue. They are wicked, crawling, topsy-turvy sinners these parrots, and never to be trusted or dealt with as friends. They are humbugs, too, and do not, as is the case with the three ravens who live outside, proclaim openly that they are demons of the wickedest order.

There is no disguise about a raven, who openly avows his disrelish for virtue, to such an extent that he does not even care for his food till he has scented it, buried it, made it appear a furtive act to get at it, and persuaded himself that he has stolen it. The three ravens who live behind the parrot-house are a dissipated trio, and will with every added year of life gain in that disreputableness of appearance which is one of their greatest sources of attraction.

It is strange that any one should have doubts about the reliableness of physiognomy as a science, after a visit to the Zoological Gardens. What creature is there in the whole collection Blessings on the whole deer tribe-they are that does not proclaim his character at a glance, well represented here--with their great, soft, and that is not helpless against the revelations harmless eyes and their wet and wholesome of his own exterior? Consider the mischief noses. Sweet-breathed, tame, and beautiful, that is suggested by the appearance of a raven they thrust their faces through the wooden or a magpie, the insatiate desire for prey of the bars and perfume the hand they touch. They eagle, the debased malignity and cunning of are even more innocent than the rabbits that the monkey. Look again at the horror that live near the superintendent's office. Your lurks in every fold of the rattlesnake or the Eye-witness found a group of these last little puff-adder. It is absolutely terrible to stoop animals who were sitting all over and upon down near the glass and face one of these repone of their number, and were eating their tiles. How still it keeps, with its erect head, meal off his very back. There was something its fixed eyes-its forked tongue, only, slipping about this that irresistibly suggested the prac-in and out, in thirst for life. How horrible the tice of the world when it meets to discuss the identity of colour with the sand and earth on affairs of a brother who has failed, or to chatter which it lies! over a death, in both which cases the friends or executors will assemble thus in not displeased convocation, and will lunch freely over the body or the bankrupt, as the case may be. What had that rabbit done to render himself subject to that discussion of his affairs in his presence? Had he become surety for a necessitous friend, had he made a love-match, or what had he done, to be lunched over in this ignominious fashion? These parrots, though a noisy race, so noisy, in fact, that it is impossible to spend many minutes in their society, are yet a jovial set. It is very difficult to know where to have a

But if the more malignant and dangerous among animals are marked as being so by the external indications of their conformation and expression, it is equally certain that the soft eyes of the antelope tell a tale of equal truth, and that the low moaning of the dove, though appealing to a different sense, conveys to the ear an assurance of peace which the nature of the bird itself bears fully out. It is not wonderful that in man, possessed as he is of that subtle organism, a face, we should be able to read character, but that this should be the case with animals with only the rudiments