and hath so far inquired into your Fortune as to guess with what Equipage you shall travel, on your last Journey. For, in professional Curiosity, he is truly a Pall Pry. Wherefore to dwell near him is as melancholy as to live in view of a Churchyard; but to be within Sound of his Hammering is to hear the Knocking at Death's Door.

To be Friends with an Undertaker is as impossible as to be the Crony of a Crocodile. He is by Trade a Hypocrite, and deals of Necessity in Mental Reservations and Equivoques. Thus he drinks to your good Health, but hopes, secretly, it will not endure. He is glad to find you so hearty as to be Apoplectic; and rejoices to see you so stout, with a short Neck. He bids you beware of your old Gout -and recommends a Quack Doctor. He laments the malignant Fever so prevalent and wishes you may get it. He compliments your Complexion-when it is Blue or Yellow: admires your upright Carriage,and hopes it will break down. Wishes you good Day-but means everlasting Night; and commends his Respects to your Father and Mother-but hopes you do not honour them. In short, his good Wishes are treacherous; his Inquiries are suspicious; and his Civilities are dangerous; as when he proffereth the Use of his Coach-or to see you Home.

one.

For the rest, he is still at odds with Humanity; at constant Issue with its Naturalists, and its Philanthropists, its Sages, its Counsellors, and its Legislators. For example, he praises the Weather-with the Wind at East; and rejoices in a wet Spring and Fall, for Death and he reap with one Sickle, and have a good or bad Harvest in common. He objects not to Bones in Bread (being as it were his own Diet), nor to ill Drugs in Beer, nor to Sugar of Lead or arsenical Finings in Wine, nor to ardent Spirits, nor to Interment in Churches. Neither doth he discountenance the Sitting on Infants; nor the swallowing of Plum Stones; nor of cold Ices at hot Balls-nor the drinking of Embrocations, nay he hath been known to contend that the wrong Dose was the right He approves, contra the Physicians, of a damp Bed, and wet Feet, of a hot Head and cold Extremities, and lends his own Countenance to the Natural Small Pox, rather than encourage Vaccinationwhich he calls a flying in the Face of Providence. Add to these, a free Trade in Poisons, whereby the Oxalic Crystals may currently become Proxy for the Epsom ones; and the corrosive Sublimate as common as Salt in Porridge. To the same End he would give unto every Cockney a Privilege to shoot, within ten miles round London, without a Taxed Licence, and would never concur in a Fine or Deodand for Fast Driving, except the Vehicle were a Hearse. Thus, whatever the popular Cry, he runs counter: a Heretic in Opinion, and a Hypocrite in Practice, as when he pretends to be sorrowful at a Funeral; or, what is worse, affects to pity the ill-paid Poor, and yet helpeth to screw them down.

To conclude, he is a Personage of ill Presage to the House of Life: a Raven on the Chimney Pot-a Deathwatch in the Wainscot,--a Winding Sheet in the Candle. To meet with him is ominous. His Looks are sinister; his Dress is lugubrious; his Speech is prophetic; and his Touch is mortal. Nevertheless he hath one Merit, and in this our World, and in these our Times, it is a main one; namely, that whatever he Undertakes he Performs.

T. H.

FREAKS OF PHILOSOPHY.

CURIOUS OPINIONS RESPECTING THE MORALITY, POLITICS, AND
RELIGION OF BEASTS AND BIRDS.

AMONGST the speculations that engaged the learned world in the twilight of philosophy, not the least curious were those upon the psychology of the lower animals. Had beasts souls? Were birds rational beings? Were fishes responsible for their actions? Did bees and emmets equal or excel mankind in moral and intellectual endowments?

We smile at these discussions now, yet such questions were formerly discussed earnestly, learnedly, and furiously. If Des Cartes degraded the brute creation into puppets or automata, there were not wanting sages who flew to the opposite pole of doctrine, and exalted the beast above the man. These were the days of undaunted heresy and intrepid paradox. In the disparagement of humanity, human ingenuity was exhausted. There was no occasion for the lion to turn painter; the superiority of the brute was not only admitted, but proclaimed. Brutes possessed reason, were adorned with the virtues, and even held to be capable of religion-nay, the particular creeds were specified, which the tenants of the woods and waters were said to have embraced!

This is a curious chapter in the long history of the freaks and wanderings of the human mind, and a few illustrations can scarcely fail to prove entertaining. There are no curiosities in phial or glass-case equal in interest to the eccentricities of learning and the abortions of philosophy.

To trace to their source the strange opinions that have been held as to the morale of the brute creation, it would be necessary to refer to the Egyptian theology, the original principle of which was the sentiment of veneration for such beasts, birds, or reptiles, as were popularly believed to have been the teachers and benefactors of the human species.

"It was no marvel," says Bacon, in the "Advancement of Learning,' ," "the manner of antiquity being to consecrate inventors, that the Egyptians had so few human idols in their temples, but almost all brute."

In the opinion of the same writer, the invention of arts and sciences is more justly to be ascribed to birds and beasts, than to all the philosophy and logic of antiquity. "Hitherto, it should seem that men are rather beholden to a wild-goat for surgery, to a nightingale for music, or to the ibis for a certain part of physic, than to logic for the discovery of sciences and arts."

This is a high compliment to the dens and caves, at the expense of

A branch of healing dittany she brought,
Which in the Cretan fields with care she sought,
Well known to wounded goats; a sure relief
To draw the pointe steel and ease the grief.

DRYDEN'S Eneid.

It is to this passage of Virgil that Bacon alludes.

the porticos and the schools. If it be asked what method of invention the lower animals have pursued-what process made the goat a chirurgeon, the nightingale a Prima Donna, or the ibis an apothecary, Bacon answers, that the impulse is the same with the brute as with the man. Necessity established the first college, and Hunger was the first Master of Arts. If it was said by one philosophic poet of men

Labor omnia vincit

Improbus, et duris urgens in rebus egestas.*

It was said of birds by another,

Quis expedivit psittaco suum XAIPE,
Picasque docuit verba nostra conari?
Magister artis, ingeniique largitor
Venter.t

Thus with respect to invention, we find beasts placed in the same rank with men by the highest philosophical authority. It is to be recollected, however, that Bacon is only speaking of the state of the inventive processes before the reform of philosophy. He magnifies the brute creation only so far as to maintain that, in total ignorance of the Aristotelian logic, they made greater progress as inventors of arts and science, than the cultivators of that logic ever made, or were capable of making, by the aid of so weak an organ.

Had the venerable goat who founded the College of Surgeons also been the inventor of Syllogism, it is questionable if it would have raised him in the opinion of Bacon.

The earliest observations, then, in natural history, having led to the actual deification of dogs, bulls, birds, and serpents, we perceive the source of the exaggerated notions of the faculties and talents of the lower animals that prevailed in the ancient world. Virgil ascribes a divinity to his bees, thus exceeding the most sanguine descriptions of the same insect that occur in modern poetry; for instance, in Shakspeare, who considers the bee merely as a merchant, a soldier, an architectat the very most a freeholder and a justice of the peace.

So work the honey bees;
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some like magistrates correct at home;

From Shakspeare's portraits of the "Great Unpaid," we may safely conclude that he would never have dreamed of paying them the compliment that Virgil pays to his bees. Perhaps from the Shakspearean days to these, there have been few Justices of the Peace in whose praise the following lines could honestly be parodied :

Induced by such examples, some have taught
That bees have portions of ethereal thought,-

Endued with particles of heavenly fire.

DRYDEN'S Georgics.

Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds,
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor ;

Who busied in his majesty surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold,

The civil citizens kneading up the honey, &c.

The same political influence is ascribed in the "Paradise Lost" to the emmet. It is curious to observe how Milton's democracy forbade him to hold up the monarchical bees as teachers of "the act of order to peopled kingdoms."

First crept

The parsimonious emmet, provident

Of future; in small room large heart enclosed:

Pattern of just equality perhaps

Hereafter, joined in her popular tribes

Of commonally.

But neither our republican nor our monarchical poet claims divine honours for his chosen insect, or more than the distinction of setting a pattern of civil government to the human species.

We shall now see how, not a poet like Virgil, but a philosopher like Celsus, compares man with other animals, and pronounces not only the intellectual, but the moral and religious superiority of the latter! The design of Celsus was to confute the Christian doctrine, that all things were made for the use of man; and to that end he maintained that the bestial nature not only equalled, but excelled the human ! He affirmed that beasts have forms of government, and are uniformly just and charitable (which it is most certain that men are not). Ants, he contended, are endowed with reason in the highest degree, have naturally the notions of several universal truths, and are in possession of a language, a grammar of which, however, he neglected to publish.

"If men," he said, "are proud of their knowledge of magic, eagles and serpents know more of it than they. These animals are familiar with many antidotes against poisons and diseases, which men value so much, that when they find some of them, they think they have found

a treasure."

But the climax of the paradoxes of this celebrated heresiarch, is the passage following:

66

If any one pretends to raise man above other animals, because he is capable of knowing te Deity, let him know that there are many beasts who may boast of the same advantage. For can any thing be more divine than to foresee and predict things to come ? Now other animals, especially birds, are in that respect the masters of men, and the art of our diviners consists only in understanding what these animals teach them; which shows us that they have naturally a more frequent and more strict commerce with the Deity than we have; that they exceed us in knowledge, and are dearer to God than we!

66

The most knowing men say also that those animals converse together in a more holy and noble manner than we do. As for the elephants, there is no creature that shows a more religious respect for oaths, or a more

inviolable fidelity, which doubtless proceeds from no other cause than their knowledge of God."

It is well known that Pliny numbers religion amongst the eminent qualities of the elephant, without, however, contending like Celsus, that he is more devout than man.

"The elephant approaches nearest to the human understanding; he comprehends the language of his country, obeys authorities, remembers orders and instructions. He is not only capable of love, but of glory. Nay, he is endued with probity, discretion, equity, and religion, qualities rare even amongst men! He worships the sun and moon. It is related that in the Moorish forests they go down in herds to the banks of a certain river, when the moon is new; solemnly sprinkle themselves with the waters, and making obeisance to the planet, return to their sylvan seats. Such is their understanding also of the religious observances of men, that they refuse to embark in ships. until they have been guaranteed a safe return upon the captain's oath."

This last statement would seem to be rather prejudicial than otherwise to the intellectual repute of the elephant; for we may safely presume that the captains of ships who transported these animals to Italy and other countries, broke their engagements with little scruple.

The elephants in the time of Pliny appear not to have known man as well as they were thought to "know God."

But there is no more curious encomium upon the talents and virtues of this singular quadruped than exists upon the records of the British Parliament, as we are assured by so great an authority as Sir Edward Coke, in the Fourth Institute. The passage is especially deserving of the attention of the members of the House of Commons.

"It appeareth in a Parliament Roll, that the parliament being, as it hath been called, commune concilium, every member of the House being a counsellor, should have three properties of the elephant; first, that he hath no gall; secondly, that he is inflexible and cannot bow; thirdly, that he hath a most ripe and perfect memory, which properties, as there it is said, ought to be in every member of the great council of parliament. First to be without gall,-that is, without malice, rancour, heat, or envy. In elephante melancholia transit in nutrimentum corporis. Every gallish inclination (if any were) should tend to the good of the whole body, or the commonwealth. Secondly, that he be constant, inflexible, and not to be bowed, or turned from the right, either for fear, reward, or favour, nor in judgment respect any person. Thirdly, of a ripe memory, that they remembering perils past might prevent dangers to come, as in that roll of parliament it appeareth.

"Whereunto we will add two other properties of the elephant: the one that though they be maximæ virtutis et maximæ intellectus, of greatest strength and understanding, tamen gregatim semper incedunt, yet they are sociable and go in companies, for animalia gregalia non sunt nociva, sed animalia solivaga sunt nociva. Sociable creatures that go in flocks or herds are not hurtful, as deer, sheep, &c.; but beasts that walk solely or singularly, as bears, foxes, &c., are dangerous and hurtful. The other, that the elephant is Philan