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 sympathise 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 a piece, 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 realise; 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? There are minute 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 speculations! 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.

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 sympathise 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 Butterfly. 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, both on this account, and because we believe it to be unique of 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,

Moto please his fancie, nor him cause t' abide: His choicefull sense with every change doth flit: 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 chango 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,

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 pre-
tensions 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.
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 butter-
fly 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.

And yet

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 apprehensionsuch as bitter herbs, and "rank, grassy fens." And like a right great poet, he makes no apology for saying so much about so little a creature. Man may be made a very little creature to a very great apprehension, yet we know what a world of things he contains; and all who partake of his senses are sharers of his importance. The passions and faculties which render us of consequence to one another, render the least thing that breathes of consequence in the eyes of the poet, who is the man that sees fair play among all the objects of the creation. A poetaster might be afraid to lower his little muse, by making her notice creatures hardly And on their pleasures greedily doth prey. less than herself: the greater the poet, the Then when he hath both plaid, and fed at fill, more godlike his impartiality. Homer draws In the warme sunne he doth himselfe embay, his similes, as Jupiter might have done, from And there him rests in riotous suffisaunce some of the homeliest animals. The god made Of all his gladfulness, and kingly joyaunce. them, and therefore would have held them in Nothing, it might be supposed, could be said due estimation: the poet (Пonths, the Maker) after this and yet the poet strikes up a ques-remakes them, and therefore contemplates them tion, in a tone like a flourish of trumpets, after in a like spirit. Old Kit Marlowe, who, as this royal dinner :Drayton says

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,

:

What more felicitic can fall to creature,
Than to enjoy delight with libertie

And to be lord of all the workes 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

"Had in him those brave sublunary things
That the first poets had,"

ventures, in some play of his, upon as true and
epic a simile as ever was written, taken from
no mightier a sphere than one of his parlour
windows :-

"Untameable as flies."

Imagine the endeavour to tame a fly! It is obvious that there is no getting at him: he

does not comprehend you: he knows nothing about you it is doubtful, in spite of his large eyes, whether he even sees you; at least to any purpose of recognition. How capriciously and provokingly he glides hither and thither! What angles and diagrams he describes in his locomotion, seemingly without any purpose! He will peg away at your sugar, but stop him who can when he has done with it. Thumping (if you could get some fairy-stick that should do it without killing) would have no effect on a creature, who shall bump his head half the morning against a pane of glass, and never learn that there is no getting through it. Solitary imprisonment would be lost on the incom-mestic animal can well have. Who would like prehensible little wretch, who can stand still with as much pertinacity as he can bustle about, and will stick a whole day in one posture. The best thing to be said of him is, that he is as fond of cleaning himself as a cat, doing it much in the same manner; and that he often rubs his hands together with an appearance of great energy and satisfaction.

horse; yet he was obliged to take human virtues along with him, even to adorn his rebukers of humanity; and in fancying ourself a horse after his fashion, who can contemplate with satisfaction the idea of trotting to an evening party in a paddock, inviting them to a dinner of oats, or rubbing one's meditative chin with a hoof? The real horse is a beautiful and spirited, but we fear not a very intelligent or sensitive animal, at least not in England. The Arabian, brought up with his master's family, is of another breeding, and seems to attain to higher faculties; but in Europe, the horse appears to be content with as few ideas as a do

After all, Spenser's picture of the butterfly's enjoyments is not complete, entomologically. The luxury is perfect; but the reader is not sure that it is all proper butterfly luxury, and that the man does not mix with it. It is not the definite, exclusive, and characteristic thing desiderated by Goldsmith. The butterfly, perhaps, is no fonder of "bathing his feet," than we should be to stick in a tub of treacle. And we ought to hear more of his antennæ and his feathers (for his wings are full of them), and the way in which they modify, or become affected by his enjoyments.

to stand winking, as he does for hours, at a man's door, moving neither to the right nor the left? There is some companionship in a coach-horse; and old "Indicator" readers know the respect we entertain on that account for the veriest hacks: but it would be no stretch of ambition in the greatest lover of animals to prefer being a horse to any other. One of its pleasantest occupations would be carrying a lady; but then, pleasant as it would be to us, humanly, we should be dull to it, inasmuch as we were a horse. A monkey is too like a man in some things to be endurable as an identification with We shudder at the humiliation of the affinity. A monkey, in his feather and red jacket, as he is carried about the streets, eagerfaced yet indifferent-looks like a melancholy, little, withered old man, cut down to that miniature size by some freak of the supernatural. What say you, reader, to being a hog? Horrible! You could not think of it: -you are too great a lover of the graces and the green fields. True;-yet there are not a few respectable, perhaps even reverend per

us.

dinary, would have no such horror. Next to eating pork, they may surely think there would be a pleasure in pork, eating. Sheep, goats, cattle of all sorts, have their repulsive aspect in this question. Among all our four-footed acquaintances, the deer seem to carry it, next the dog; their shapes are so elegant, and places of resort so poetical; yet, like cattle, their lives seem but dull ;-and there is the huntsman, who is the devil. Fancy the being compelled to scamper away from Tomkins, one of the greatest fools in existence, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, with the tears running down your face, and your heart bursting!

But on the other hand, the inability, in these sympathies with our fellow-creatures, to divest ourselves of an overplus of one's human nature, gives them a charm by the very imper-sonages, who, to judge from their tastes in orfection. We cannot leave our nature behind us when we enter into their sensations. We must retain it, by the very reason of our sympathy; and hence arises a pleasant incongruity, allied to other mixtures of truth and fiction. One of the animals which a generous and sociable man would soonest become, is a dog. A dog can have a friend; he has affections and character, he can enjoy equally the field and the fireside; he dreams, he caresses, he propitiates; he offends, and is pardoned; he stands by you in adversity; he is a good fellow. We would sooner be a dog than many of his masters. And yet what lover of dogs, or contemner of his own species, or most trusting reader of Ovid, could think with comfort of suddenly falling on all-fours, and scampering about with his nose to the ground! Who would like to lap when he was thirsty; or, as Marvell pretended his hungry poet did—

"With griesly tongue to dart the passing flies?" Swift might have fancied, when he wrote his Houhhynnms, that he could fain have been a

No, dear and grave, and at the same time most sprightly and miscellaneous reader, one would rather be a bird than a beast.* Birds neither offend us by any revolting similarity, nor repel us by a dissimilarity that is frightful; their songs, their nests, their courtship, their vivacity, give them a strong moral likeness to some of our most pleasing characteristics; and *Since writing this, I have a doubt in favour of the squirrel.