sparrow-hawk and hen-harrier seldom chase a bird to any distance on the wing. The owls have all extremely hard and needlelike claws, and in every respect the bird is singularly well adapted for its manner of feeding, which it does almost wholly at night. Its immensely large ears must enable it to hear the slightest movement of the field-mouse, upon which it chiefly feeds; and its sharply-pointed talons contract with a tenacity and closeness unequalled by those of any of the hawk tribe, excepting, perhaps, the hen-harrier. Again, the soft, downy feathers and rounded wings of the owl enable it to flit as noiselessly as a shadow to and fro, as it searches for the quick-eared mouse, whom the least sound would at once startle and drive into its hole out of reach

of its deadly enemy. As it is, the mouse feeds on in heedless security, with eyes and nose busily occupied in searching for grains of corn or seeds, and depending on its quickly sensitive ear to warn it of the approach of danger. The foot of man, or even the tread of a dog or cat, it is sure to hear; but the owl glides silently and quickly round the corner of the hedge or stack-like Death, tacito clam venit illa pede,'-and the first intimation which the mouse has of its danger, is being clasped in the talons of the destroyer. The rough and strong feet of the osprey are perfectly adapted to the use which they are put to, that is, catching and holding the slippery and strong 'sea-trout or grilse. The fact of a bird darting down from a height in the air and securing a fish in deep water, seems almost incredible, especially when we consider the rapidity with which a fish, and particularly a sea-trout, darts away at the slightest shadow of danger, and also, when we consider that the bird who catches it is not even able to swim, but must secure its prey by one single dart made from a height of perhaps fifty feet.

The Colour of Birds.

The ptarmigan are exactly the colour of the stones in summer, and of the snow in winter, and change their colour as that of their abiding place is altered. The grouse is as nearly the colour of the brown heather as it is possible for a bird to be: his bright eye and red comb are the only discoverable points about him when he is crouched in it. The blackcock's usual haunt is in lower situations, and he delights in the peat-moss, where the ground is nearly as black as his own plumage. The partridge and quail are exactly similar in colour to the dried grass and stubble, and the quickest eye can seldom see them on the ground when crouched, and not erect or moving about to feed. The pheasant's colour very nearly resembles the dead leaves of the wood or

coppice, which are his favourite haunts. The owl sits securely close to the trunk of a forest tree, her mottled brown plumage being in colour very like the colour of the bark where she is perched. The peregrinefalcon, with her blue-grey feathers, can scarcely be distinguished from the lichenadorned crag, where she sits for hours together as motionless as the rock itself. The eagle sits upright on some cliff of the same colour as himself, huddled up into a shape which only the experienced eye detects to be that of a bird. The attitudes and figures of the whole tribe of hawks are very striking and characteristic, and as unlike as possible to the stuffed caricatures which one usually meets with, and in which the natural character of the bird is entirely lost.

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Let him rest in peace. Charles St. John was a true gentleman, a true sportsman, a true lover of nature. A thoughtful observer, and a gentle critic of the birds and fishes, of the bipeds and the quadrupeds, of the lovely lowland strath, lying between the mountains and the sea, which his writings have rendered classic, he made the naturalist's vocation his own. But though this was the vocation to which his tastes and his instincts led him, yet it is impossible to read the volumes which he has left without feeling that he had studied men as well as birds; that he might have secured a position for himself in our public life; that the blood of the masterful Bolingbrokes the Bolingbrokes who had been scholars and rulersflowed in his veins. Whether his choice was the wiser I do not stay to inquire. But that the life of Charles St. John was a happier life in every respect than that of Henry St. John, cannot well be doubtedcannot at least be doubted by those who have glanced even in passing at the brilliant and unhappy career of the most eloquent of English statesmen.

no shuffling or trifling-you perceive at once that an eminently honest and able man is, with wit, eloquent address, and keen native logic, maintaining opinions which he is convinced (having thought them out on his own account) are founded on immutable common sense. It would be ungrateful in particular to fail to acknowledge the signal services which Mr. Russel has rendered to the cause of religious liberty. Single-handed, among a priest-ridden population, he has asserted with uncompromising resoluteness, with unshaken fidelity, those principles of spiritual and social toleration, which are the exclusive possession of no political party, and which, though sometimes borne down by senseless clamour, are yet, in the fine words of Macaulay, 'strong with the strength, and immortal with the immortality of truth.'

But notwithstanding his keen zest for controversy, it is clear that the quiet pastoral region round St. Mary's Loch, or that noble western sea-board which is washed by the Atlantic, has a strong hold on Mr. Russel's heart. For many years he has been a mighty angler.

His fame is in all the schools-from John o' Groat's to the English Border; and I rather fancy that this is the kind of fame which he most values and relishes. He is a great authority, besides, with those everlasting Committees which 'sit on salmon,'-for that questio vexata is as frequently before the House' as Maynooth or the Ballot. Mr. Russel says that angling has a tendency to make men good men. 'It soothes and elevates, and leads to meditation and self-scrutiny. Many a man who, in the stir and pressure of active life, becomes hardened to the gentle and more generous emotions, obtains glimpses that make him less forlorn or more divine, when wandering “the quiet waters by." This is perfectly true; and, in the writer's own experience, after a fray with the Sabbatarians (who are presently agitating to get the Scotch cows compelled to retain their milk on Sunday), or a shindy with the Free Kirk, he must have found the Tweed a famous 'disinfectant.' Thus he has preserved that modesty and simplicity, that frankness of tongue, and that singleness of heart, which mark the disciples of the gospel of good-will and brotherly kindness which is preached 'by the river's brim.'

The present volume is the fruit of his ripe experience, and of a long and intimate acquaintance with all that has been written or spoken upon the salmon question.' There has been as much controversy about the character of the salmon as about the character of Hamlet. What kind of fellow is the salmon in his youth? who are his connexions? how is he related to the parr, the smolt, and the grilse? These, and such as these, are the questions which have agitated anglers since the days of Izaak Walton-questions discussed,' as Mr. Russel says, 'with as fierce an intolerance, as resolute a contempt for facts and reason, as much heat and as little profit, as if they had been questions in theology.' Mr. Russel is a practised controversialist, and his chapter on The Natural History of the Salmon' is a fine specimen of bright, rapid, and vigorous logic;

years

critic-much less any mere journalist-among the many nations who watched with interest and surprise the dawning of the great American strife, approached, in a remote degree even, in his forward vision, the realities that were to mark the history of the next three years. The boldest of Abolitionists could not have hoped for attempts to sweep away the detested institution so thorough as those that the Northern President has tried. The most calm and rational of those who viewed slavery in its social and physical aspect, could not have anticipated the very moderate effect which those attempts would actually produce upon the portion of the South still held by the slaveowner, and the utter indifference with which they would be received by the great mass of those whom they were intended to free.

The

most determined opponent of democratic institutions could not foresee how mighty an argument against their use was soon to be drawn from the encroachments of the Federal Government on the liberty of its subjects, and the tame submission of the latter under the engrossing influence of civil war; still less would he have expected to be able to plead the superior bearing of the Confederate military and civil authorities as a strong proof of the necessity of retaining some of the aristocratic element in the youngest and most flourishing Republic. The ardent advocate of the virtues of the most popular form of government would have hesitated before asserting that a long series of miscarried expeditions and discreditable defeats would not weaken the hands of the Government of the North, nor lessen the strenuous resolve of its inhabitants to quench the flame of secession, were it in the blood of half the people of the land. The best read and most devoted student of the political economy of the past had, as it would seem, not the sufficient material before him to foretell how three VOL. LXIX. NO. CCCCXIV.

sponding increase of national incomings, should yet find the credit of the Northern States so untouched, and their resources so unshaken, as to permit of their contemplating a continuance for years of the spendthrift system of finance suddenly adopted by a hitherto economical people. Least of all would the traveller whose course had led him hastily through the South, or the reader of the few works which professed to unveil its interior to the outer world, have divined the perseverance with which the Slave States with their sparse white population, destitution of manufactures, and character, noted previously for sudden fierce excitement rather than for stedfast endurance-should yet be prolonging the struggle they had provoked. Little would such an one have prophesied how-though unaided by immigration or alliance, stripped of all internal credit and foreign trade, deprived by stringent blockade of the benefit of that great staple, on the world's great want of which they had once reckoned for all needful supplies-they should yet have sustained without flinching the assaults of their mighty neighbour, bringing against them resources almost illimitable in men and ships and money, and combining with the most determined and continuous efforts for their open overthrow by outward force, the attempt to call forth within them the elements of servile insurrection, and to legalize it by pretended authority.

Indeed, the history of the three years' civil war has surprised, and in some measure disappointed all parties. If the people of the Northern States admit that their generals and statesmen have proved inferior in their calibre to those of the South, they have only been brought to this knowledge by failures so repeated and notorious, as to lie patent to the world, and of necessity to weaken the faith of many in the administrative value of their institutions. If the Confederates have great reason

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to be proud of the resources of their leaders, the genius of their generals, and the patriotism of their citizens, they have bitterly to admit that all these virtues, and all their great sacrifices, have failed to bring to their side one foreign ally, or to arrest the deadly presence of the enemy's superior weight upon the vitals of their land. The enemies of slavery are obliged to own that their theories have not been justified by the success of the attempts at emancipation tried under Federal military rule; whilst those of democracy, who triumphed so hugely in the beginning at the break-down of its institution under the terrible strain of the rupture, now stand by astonished into unwilling admiration by the energy and extent of resources called forth by the popular will, and their ungrudged and entire application to the one great national purpose. We may well draw some lessons of modesty in our prophecies, and moderation in our political theories, from the great events enacted for three years past within the borders of the once United States.

Though the present time is marked by too much heat and passion for us as yet to obtain entirely unprejudiced views of the struggle, yet, our knowledge of its earlier scenes is-thanks to the allpervading influence of the newspaper press, and the attention of intelligent European observers-far in advance of what has hitherto been the case with the contemporaries of the former great contests of the world. Commentaries of much recognized value have appeared already on the first two years of the war; and the reports of the chief generals, and proceedings of the Committee of Congress on the conduct of the war, are full of details, interesting to those who would critically examine this portion of American history. But of the last twelve months we are not aware that any connected account has been given to the world. We propose here to attempt to review its events briefly in their successive order; first casting a retrospective look at those which preceded them,

so as to bring the reader fairly up to the starting-point we have selected.

The 12th of April, 1861, the date on which Beauregard opened fire upon Fort Sumter by direction of the Confederate Government, marks the outbreak of the hostilities, which the Southern expectation of a peaceful separation had until then delayed. The leaders of that section had undoubtedly underrated the effect that this stroke was destined to produce throughout the North. From the extremest supineness, the people rushed into the strife with a patriotic ardour which swept away all hope of peaceful counsel. The Confederates smiled, indeed, for a while at the proposed subjugation of their vast country by the 75,000 volunteers summoned for three months' service under Lincoln's first call. But the rapidity with which regiments far in excess of this demand were offered to the Washington Government, and the immediate subsequent enlistment of 80,000 additional levies, the greater part of which were to augment the Union regular army and navy, told that the coming efforts for reconquest would be made with an earnestness which it would tax all the resources of the seceding States to meet. Then came three months of grim suspense. These were not idly spent, however, on the Federal side; for in that space was settled for the whole war the important question as to the possibility of connecting Washington so firmly with the whole northern portion of the Union, as both to maintain the central government there, and to use the city and its adjuncts as an advanced post, or base, from whence to commence hostile operations securely against the chief seat of secession at Richmond, and the Atlantic States of the South.

The Confederates had at this time good hopes of possessing themselves of the capital; whilst the first attempts of Lincoln to bring reinforcements to defend it through Baltimore, produced a fierce outbreak of the mob of that city, whose sympathies were warmly with his opponents. To have yielded to this