CHAPTER LXIV.

Bees, Butterflies, &c, with the consideration of a curious argument, drawn from the government of the hive.

ALEXANDER said, that if he were not Alexander, he should wish to be Diogenes. Reader, what sort of animal would you be, if you were obliged to be one, and were not a man?

Irish Reader :- A woman.

Oh, ho! The choice is judicious, but not to the purpose, "you divil :"_ '—we mean, out of the pale of the species. Consider the question, dear readers, and answer it to your friends and consciences. The pastime is pretty, and fetches out the character. Nor is there anything in it unworthy the dignity of your humanity, as that liberal term may show us, without farther reasons. Animals partake with us the gifts of song, and⚫ beauty, and the affections. They beat us in some things, as in the power of flight. The dove has the wings of the angel. The meanest reptile has eyes and limbs, as well as Nicholas, emperor of all the Russias. Sir Philip Sydney tells us of a riding-master at Vienna, who expatiated so eloquently on the qualities of the noble animal he had to deal with, that he almost persuaded our illustrious countryman to wish himself a horse. A year or two back, everybody in London that had a voice, was resolved upon being "a butterfly, born in a bower:" and Goldsmith had such a tendency to sympathize with the least sympathetic part of the creation, that he took a pleasure in fancying himself writing an autobiography of fish. It was the inconsiderate laugh of Johnson, upon his mention of it, that produced that excellent retort on the Doctor's grandiosity of style : "If you were to describe little fish conversing, you would make them talk like great whales."

How different from the sensations of mankind, with its delicate skin and apprehensive fingers, must be those of feathered and

scaled animals, of animals with hoofs and claws, and of such creatures as beetles and other insects, who live in coats of mail, have twenty feet apiece, and hundreds of eyes! A writer who should make these creatures talk, would be forced, in spite of his imagination, to write parts of his account in a jargon, in order to typify what he could not express. What must be their sensations when they awake; when they spin webs; when they wrap themselves up in the chrysalis; when they stick for hours together on a wall or a pane of glass, apparently stupid and insensible? What may not the eagle see in the sky, beyond the capabilities of our vision? And on the other hand, what possibilities of visible existence round about them may they not realize ; what creatures not cognisable by our senses. There is reason to believe in the existence of myriads of earthly creatures, who are not conscious of the presence of man. Why may not man be unconscious of others, even at his side? insects that evidently know nothing of the human hand that is close to them; and millions in water and in air that apparently can have no conception of us. As little may our five senses be capable of knowing others. But what, it may be asked, is the good of these speculatious! To enlarge knowledge, and vivify the imagination. The universe is not made up of hosiery and the three per cents. ; no, nor even of the Court Guide.

There are minute

Sir Thomas Browne would not have thought it beneath him to ask what all those innumerable little gentry (we mean the insects) are about, between our breakfast and dinner; how the time passes in the solitudes of America, or the depths of the Persian gulf; or what they are doing even, towards three in the afternoon, in the planet Mercury. Without going so far as that for an enlargement of our being, it will do us no harm to sympathize with as many creatures as we can. It gives us the privilege of the dervise, who could pitch himself into the animals he killed, and become a stag or a bird. We know not what sort of a fish Goldsmith could have made of himself. La Fontaine's animals are all La Fontaine, at least in their way of talking. As far as luxury goes, and a total absence from human cares, nobody has painted animal enjoyment better than the most luxurious of poets, Spenser, in the description of his Butter

fly. La Fontaine called himself the Butterfly of Parnassus; but we defy him to have produced anything like the abundance and continuity of the following picture, which is exuberant to a degree that makes our astonishment run over in laughter. It seems as if it would never leave off. We quote the whole of it, believe it to be unique of

both on this account, and because we the kind. Ovid himself is not so long nor so fine in any one of his descriptions, which are also not seldom misplaced—a charge that does not attach here: and Marino, another exuberant genius of the south of Italy, is too apt to run the faults of Ovid to seed, without having some of his good qualities. Spenser is describing a butterfly, bound upon his day's pleasure. A common observer sees one of these beautiful little creatures flutter across a garden, thinks how pretty and sprightly it is, and there his observation comes to an end. Now mark what sort of report a poet can give in, even of the luxuries of a fly :

Thus the fresh Clarion, being readie dight,
Unto his journey did himselfe addresse,
And with good speed began to take his flight
Over the fields, in his franke lustinesse ;
And all the champaine o'er he soared light,

And all the countrey wide he did possesse,
Feeding upon their pleasures bounteouslie,
That none gainsaid, nor none did him envie.

The woods, the rivers, and the medowes greene,
With his aire-cutting wings he measured wide,
Ne did he leave the mountaines bare unseene,

Nor the ranke grassie fennes delights untride
But none of these, however sweet they beene,

Mote please his fancie, nor him cause t' abide
His choicefull sense with every change doth flis
No common things may please a wavering wit

To the gay gardins his unstaid desire

Him wholly carried, to refresh his sprights:
There lavish Nature, in her best attire,

Powres forth sweet odors and alluring sights,
And Arte, with her contending, doth aspire
T'excell the naturall with made delights:

And all, that faire or pleasant may be found,
In riotous excesse doth there abound.

There he arriving, round about doth flie,
From bed to bed, from one to t'other border:
And takes survey, with curious busie eye,

Of every flowre and herbe there set in order;
Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly,

Yet none of them he rudely doth disorder, Ne with his feete their silken leaves deface, But pastures on the pleasures of each place.

And evermore, with most varietie,

And change of sweetness (for all change is sweet)

He casts his glutton sense to satisfie,

Now sucking of the sap of herbe most meet, Or of the dew, which yet on them does lie;

Now in the same bathing his tender feet: And then he percheth on some branch thereby, To weather him, and his moyst wings to dry.

And then again he turneth to his play,

To spoil the pleasures of that paradise ;
The wholesome sage, the lavender still gray,
Rank-smelling rue, and cummin good for eyes,
The roses raigning in the pride of May,

Sharp hyssop good for green wounds remedies,
Faire marigolds, and bees-alluring thyme,
Sweet marjoram, and daysies decking prime.

Cool violets, and orpine growing still,

Embathed balm, and chearful galingale,
Fresh costmarie, and breathfull camomill,
Dull poppy, and drink-quickening setuale,
Veyne-healing verven, and head-purging dill.
Sound savorie, and basil hartie-hale,

Fat coleworts, and comforting perseline,
Cool lettuce, and refreshing rosmarine;

And whatso else of vertue good or ill,

Grew in this gardin, fetch'd from far away, Of every one he takes, and tastes at will,

And on their pleasures greedily doth prey, Then when he hath both plaid, and fed at fill,

In the warme sunne he doth himselfe embay,

And there him rests in riotous suffisaunce

Of all his gladfulness, and kingly joyaunce.

Nothing, it might be supposed, could be said after this; and yet the poet strikes up a question, in a tone like a flourish of trumpets, after this royal dinner :

"What more felicitie can fall to creature,

Than to enjoy delight with libertie

And to be lord of all the works of Nature?

To reigne in the aire from th' earth to highest skie,
To feed on flowers, and weedes of glorious feature?
To take whatever thing doth please the eye?
Who rests not pleased with such happiness,
Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness."

Amen, thou most satisfying of poets! But when are human beings to be as well off in that matter as the butterflies? or how are you to make them content, should the time come when they have nothing to earn? However, there is a vast deal to be learned from the poet's recommendation, before we need ask either of those questions. We may enjoy a great deal more innocent "delight with liberty" than we are in the habit of doing; and may be lords, if not of "all the works of nature," of a great many green fields and reasonable holidays. It seems a mighty thing to call a butterfly "lord of all the works of nature. Many lords, who have pretensions to be butterflies, have no pretensions as wide as those. And, doubtless, there is a pleasant little lurking of human pride and satire in the poet's eye, notwithstanding his epical impartiality, when he talks thus of the universal empire of his hero. And yet how inferior are the grandest inanimate works of nature, to the least thing that has life in it! The oaks are mighty, and the hills mightier; yet that little participation of the higher spirit of vitality, which gifts the butterfly with locomotion, renders him unquestionable lord of the oaks and the hills. He does what he pleases with them, and leaves them with a spurn of his foot.

Another beauty to be noted in the above luxurious lines, is the fine sense with which the poet makes his butterfly fond of things not very pleasant to our human apprehension-such as bitter