that of a gentleman," who took home his work in top boots and ruffled shirts, carrying canes or riding in coaches. Many weavers used to walk about with five-pound Bank of England notes spread out under their hatbands, thus curiously prefiguring one of the most remarkable characteristics of the Californian diggers; they would smoke none but long "churchwarden" pipes, kept themselves as a race apart, and suffered no one else to intrude into their particular rooms in their public-houses. In seventeen hundred and ninety-seven the four-guinea piece of cambric fell to twenty-nine shillings for the weaver; continuing the downward course up to eighteen hundred and twenty-seven, when it brought only six-and-sixpence. This was the natural consequence of a great discovery made popular. A subscription was set on foot for Crompton during a year of great distress, and he got between four and five hundred pounds, which was the first real reward yet obtained for his invention. Afterwards Parliament was "spoken to," and the spinner came up to London to see to the advancement of his own fortunes. He was in the lobby with Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Blackburn, when Mr. Perceval, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, came up. "You will be glad to hear," he said, "that we mean to propose twenty thousand pounds for Crompton; do you think that will be satisfactory ?" Crompton walked away, not wishing to hear the reply, and in two minutes a great shout was raised-Perceval had been shot. Of course the motion for the grant was withdrawn for that night; and when made it was made by a less friendly patron only five thousand pounds were asked for instead of twenty. The sum which Crompton proved that he had contributed to the revenue by the number of his mules then at work, was about three hundred thousand a year; the per-centage of five thousand pounds out of this increase was an unheard-of meanness. And even this did not come free of charges. One of the charges was a fee for forty-seven pounds seventeen shillings and fourpence, "being fees to both Houses, for inserting one clause in the appropriation act;" and a parliamentary friend, who had pushed his claims, took care to make a demand for a loan of one out of the five thousand pounds; which request, however, it is satisfactory to know, was refused. Things never went thoroughly well after this. The sons disagreed, and turned out but indifferent helps and supports to him; some bleaching works that he took, failed; his machinery was copied, his patterns pirated; the world, that busy, pushing, commercial world of Bolton, trod too hard on his heels, and even threatened to drive its Juggernaut over his body; and, as years passed on, the grey, grave, quiet old man, grown more thoughtful and more pensive, grew also poorer and more obscure, and wore a deeper air of ill-usage and wrong. From poverty to poverty he sank lower and lower; and his last days, under the mismanagement of his thriftless and not over estimable daughter, were threatened with worse than stint, when a number of his friends banded together, and raised a subscription among themselves, with which they purchased an annuity of sixty-three pounds, and so rescued him from at least any frightful catastrophe. A last attempt to obtain a further grant from government failed, partly because (so it was stated) "his primitive enemy," Sir Robert Peel, had undermined him; and partly because the House had one of its odd fits of ingratitude and want of appreciation concerning him, which nothing could overcome. Poor Crompton felt only too keenly the wrongs which his own want of business capacity and common sense had helped to draw upon him, and died, as he had lived, with all the bitterness belonging to a sense of failure and disappointment. But his invention has revolutionised the cotton trade, and the cotton trade is one of the great powers of the present; so that in this way the old Lancashire spinner has made himself an undying influence in the future, and has set his mark and seal upon a trade which may be taken as the symbol of western civilisation and British supremacy. No mean epitaph that for an obscure Lancashire man, to whom eighteenpence a night was good pay for his violinplaying, and whose mother thrashed him soundly if he failed in his daily tale of work! VATICAN ORNITHOLOGY. M. TOUSSENEL is a passionate sportsman. But as he shoots, he studies his game, drawing from it what he calls passional analogies. Every beast and every bird is the emblem of some manifestation of human passion. Man is, therefore, not so widely separated from the brutes as he may fancy himself to be. But even vegetables, whom we are accustomed to consider if not as altogether harmless, at least as guiltless and irresponsible, are the objects of M. Toussenel's admiration or hatred, according as they represent human virtues or vices. For instance, his office of Analogist, which he holds to be on a par with that of prophet or lawgiver-in fact, to be a combination of the two, renders him the most inimical of all the natural enemies of the mangel-wurzel family. If you ask him why he entertains such a violent rancour against an innocent root, "Innocent! the Beetroot?" he exclaims; an impure plant, which prefers to feed on the filthiest diet? I know the odious race too well to tolerate them; they are their fathers' own children, the offspring of protectionists and monopolists. You are curious to learn the reason of my mortal antipathy for this plant? Listen, then, with all your ears. "Know that Passional Analogy, which is the science of sciences, sometimes reveals to those who consult it secrets of which the profane are ignorant. The Analogist has not to bestow a second glance upon the juice of the beetroot (a reddish and sweetish juice, false in colour and pharisaical in flavour) in order to discover the principle of all the evil passions which secretly ferment in the bosom of the plant-notably, an unbridled ambition, characterised by a tendency that the Analogist had the opportunity of studyto universal monopoly. You know that the ing the snipe-shooter of Albion, and of apprecolour red, so beloved by savages, is the emblem ciating his high and powerful moral and stomachic of ambition. The Analogist foresaw what has faculties. The marshes of France, in consehappened; namely, that the beetroot, a native quence of their mediterranean position, have long of cold climates, which is only capable of pro- been the compulsory halting-place of the Scanducing spurious sugar, would not be satisfied dinavian snipes during their half-yearly travels to with substituting its disloyal produce for the the south and back. There is, on the confines of genuine sugar of the cane; but that, as soon as Berry and Touraine, an unknown district, which it had obtained the monopoly of that precious is called La Brenne, after the name of its Roman article, it would audaciously aspire to rob the explorer, Brennus. Of all the cantons of France, vine of the privilege of supplying wine and with the exception of the crown preserves and alcohol, and would not even shrink from the those of M. de Gâville, La Brenne is the most insane attempt to supplant the coffee-tree in the abundant in all sorts of game. The stag, the production of Mocha. The Analogist foresaw wild-boar, the roebuck, and the wolf are not all that, and cried aloud on the house-tops. But unknown animals there; the great bustard and no one regarded him; his voice was lost in the the swan are abundant in severe winters. Hares wilderness. The insolent, protected beetroot are still sold there at from ten to fifteen pence has been dragging France through such sloughs a piece, a red-legged partridge for sevenpenceof dirt, that at last it can be borne no longer." halfpenny, and woodcocks at about the same Toussenel, the Analogist, has not grown milder price. But it is the water-fowl which has with age; but he is comforted with the prospect hitherto been the glory of La Brenne, which is of a better time coming, although his own per- a sandy plain, half water, half land, an adorable sonal enjoyment is thereby likely to be curtailed. desert in the eyes of the artistic sportsman, a To explain the Analogist is an ardent snipe- series of swamps, wherein the fresh-water torshooter. Of all sport, successful sport in the toise flounders at ease, where quails remain all marshes is the highest attainment of the art. La winter long, and where an estate of fifteen hunchasse au marais, marsh-shooting, has intoxi- dred acres is let for a rental of two hundred cating seductions, irresistible allurements, which and forty pounds, and is sold in fee simple for throw everything else into the background. To four thousand eight hundred pounds. It was in give it up, is to lose sporting caste. No sport La Brenne that the Analogist had the good forstimulates to so high a degree the combined tune to admire, in the person of a child of enthusiasm of soul and sense. None exacts Albion, the sublime union of the perfect snipelike it the double sureness of eye and foot, the shooter with the just and decided man of passion of art united to a temperament of iron, Horace's ode-justum ac tenacem propositi and contempt of fevers and colds in the head, a virum. This mortal, unique in his class, had cordial understanding between the sportsman made a vow, when he came to La Breune, never and the dog. The snipe is the reward of the to shoot any other game than snipes. He had strong and the prize of the skilful. Snipe- shot there for twenty years, and he had fired shooting is the solemn test which settles pre- twenty thousand shots, without once failing in cedence amongst the upper ranks of sportsmen. his engagement-without ever having menaced It can even render an Englishman almost re- the life of a hare or a partridge. So that those spectable in M. Toussenel's eyes. Afflicted with creatures, aware of his habits, instead of eschronic Anglophobia, the Analogist can yet speak caping at his approach, came forward to have a in not very harsh terms of the considerable emi-look at him. A capital shot, morcover, and modest gration of British sportsmen-all cut after the same pattern, long, dry, upright, without any joints, but in other respects the best guns in the world, and worthy to carry the standard of St. Hubert-who pursue the snipe through its favourite haunts, even to the Pontine Marshes. They boldly scorn all vulgar fear of the buffalo, the wild bull, and the malaria-three obstacles which Nature might be supposed to have placed as guardians on the frontiers of the Holy City, to prevent the entrance of misbelieving sportsmen. A poor defence, after all, the fever of malaria turns out to be! These wicked heretics have discovered that the true specific against paludian fever is, not sulphate of quinine, as has been hitherto believed, but hashed snipes, liberally washed down with the oldest claret. It seems that Providence, ever propitious to the hunter, had placed the remedy by the side of the disease. The chase is the mother of arts, and the first of the fruits of the tree of knowledge. It was not in Italy, however, but in France, in proportion, never saying, "I have killed," but "I have seen so many snipes to-day.". But the end of these glorious days is approaching. Agricultural Reform is coming to claim her prey. The drainer, the leveller, the stubber-up of rotten stumps, are threatening to bleed the country at every vein, under the pretext of sanitary improvement. Cabbages will soon grow on the domain of the bustard; the snipe will shortly disappear, the victim of progress; and yet the analogistic sportsman has the philosophy to master his grief, through the consideration that the marshes of La Brenne are not, like the Pontine Marshes, a divine institution, a portion of the realm of an infallible ruler, but the work both of human agency and of human neglect. What man has made, he thinks, man may always unmake. In short, M. Toussenel, who has the acumen to detect in various birds the type of every phase of human nature, has thrown a new light on the Roman Question by informing us that not only the Pope, cardinals, prelates, and priests of Rome, but also the abbesses and nuns are-snipes! A canoniser of saints, an authoriser of modern miracles, an excommunicator of kings, an inventor of Immaculate Conceptions, would seem to merit a more dignified comparison; but however high-soaring a bird of prey he may have been in his time, however loud-crowing a cock of the European walk, a snipe he is now, and a snipe he intends to remain, if people will let him, and that for excellent reasons. choice. The snipe is magnificently in the right, seeing that all reforms, temporal or spiritual, political or religious, are the same; namely, an insurrection of some sort against an authority of some sort, which is based upon Divine right, and claims to be delegated by the Divinity himself. During the golden age of the snipe's history, during the thousand years which began with Clovis and ended with Luther, the double-bar relled percussion gun, the dastardly child of progress, was not yet invented. On the other hand, the wise institution of meagre meals, which forbid men to make a god of their belly, had conferred on the carp a high economical and social importance; and pisciculture, under the influence of ichthyophagous ideas, became a profitable business, which was doubly dear to the monastic orders who are naturally inclined to the rearing of fish, because it is compatible with re There is no need for a man to be wonderfully strong in natural history to know that the snipe, who has a very long, slender, and soft bill, is particularly fond of sloppy, marshy grounds, of the tail-ends of ponds, of the banks of stagnant waters, that is to say, of the sole spots where it can find an ample pasturage of worms. Now, as soon as we have acknowledged the truth of the clear proposition which is laid down as the principle of the lately proposed French minis-pose of mind and body. In those days, the doterial project, that every agricultural improvement must begin by the drainage of a country and the clearing out of its watercourses, the first consequence which logic draws from it is, that there exists a fatal antagonism between the interests of agriculture and the interests of the suipe. Logic also allows the long-billed bird to refuse any compromise on such tender ground, sinee the question for it is, "To be, or not to be ?" : And now for a third proposition, which appears to be equally true with the two preceding All reforms are sisters, and fatally commence by agricultural improvement. The destiny of the snipe is written in these words. Thus, the discovery of the compass leads to the discovery of the New World. Christopher Columbus's discovery soon induces us to discover that the earth is round, and that it spins round the sun, contrary to the opinion which had been held for ages. Galileo's and Copernicus's discoveries cause us to surmise that there are passages in Holy Writ which are open to more than one interpretation; the final consequence is a schism which detaches from Rome three or four great nations and fifty millions of souls. And on that day, mark it well, Luther's heresy dealt a fearful blow on the snipe, who suffers from it to this very day. It robbed the snipe, as it robbed | Rome, of England, Saxony, Prussia, Holland, and the rest, suppressing, in those countries, monasteries, monastic vows, and indulgences to eat meat on fast-days. main of stagnant waters, the fish-ponds and the carperies, extended wider every week and month, to the great delight of the snipe, whose populous tribes had no other care than to make love and to die fat under the protectionist laws of their blessed country. But Progress has come to upset pitilessly the wild-fowl's edifice of happiness-Progress, in all sorts of forms, under all sorts of disguises; Religious progress, under the mask of reform, has deadened in men's hearts all faith in the merits of the flesh of the carp, and has smothered the remorse of guilty stomachs. Then, political and philosophical progress stripped the monastic orders of their estates and their fish-ponds, to bestow them on the nation at large. Lastly, agricultural progress, the bitter enemy of pools and puddles, has conceived the notion of replacing pisciculture by a more remunerative as well as a more salubrious form of industry. You may remember the picturesque fashion in which an orator of the National Convention described the change in the situation. The phrase has attained celebrity, and merits it. "The reign of the carp is over," said the butcher Legendre; let that of the ox begin." The time was come, he thought, to substitute the meadow for the pond, and herds of calves for shoals of finny fry. The orator might have completed his description of the state of things by another metaphor equally in accordance with the parliamentary style of the epoch: "The tocsin of '89 is the snipe's funeral bell." For the interests of the carp and the snipe are the same in this religious, political, industrial, and agricultural pond question. Every man who has cut his wisdom-teeth has the right to form an opinion of the principle of the possession of temporal wealth by those who have taken a vow of humility and poverty. Men But the instant that the orator of the Conmay form an opinion, but snipes may not. All vention had discussed the contested royalty of the popes whom Dante encountered in his In- the ox and the carp dynasties, the snipe's opinion ferno, will avow that it was their temporalities on the Roman Question might have been guessed which placed them there. But the snipe does beforehand. The snipe only obeys the impenot admit their testimony, recorded by a Ghibel-rious prescriptions of its nature, when it sticks line pen. The snipe does not comprehend the to the statu quo, in opposition to the anodyne. subtle distinctions between the temporal and the spiritual, which pretended sages would have prevail in the councils of the government of its reforms counselled by the French government. There is one measure especially to which it cannot in reason subscribe, and which it has even a right to consider almost as the abomination of desolation predicted by the Prophet Daniel; namely, the admission of the laity to the administration of temporal affairs. If this system prevail, what security has the snipe that some unlucky prefect may not take it into his head to drain the Pontine Marshes, and so to drive it from its last asylum, under the specious pretext of destroying the focus of malaria, and increasing the sources of public wealth? As the snipe has already been caught in this way (having lost England, being in the way of losing France, while Spain and Hungary will drop off at the first high wind), as she knows that there is no safety for her out of the domains of the Roman Church, she cannot in conscience_enter into any negotiations on this chapter. In her place you would do the same, and valiantly inscribe on your flag, "Malaria and Antonelli for ever!" itself to be plucked by every bird of prey, who are very fond of its flesh. One species has been called sourde, the Deaf Snipe, because it is dumb. Deaf, dumb, and blind is a sad position; and one can easily conceive that a poor bird afflicted with so many infirmities should be tormented by perpetual terrors, and should take every stock and stone for a devouring monster. This latter hallucination is shared by superstitious folk, who also are short-sighted and small-brained, and are beset by anxieties which expose them to be duped by crafty intriguers who persuade them to leave their goods to religious corporations, to the great detriment and sorrow of their legitimate heirs. The French Civil Code has sagely undertaken the defence of the interests of these disinherited persons, by forbidding feeble souls from making their wills in favour of their doctors or their confessors. It It suffices to be thoroughly acquainted with Lastly, the most striking trait in the snipe's the manners and customs of the snipe, to per- character, and which best brings out into high ceive that she has been deputed by Nature to relief its passional dominant (the spirit of conpersonify the spirit of contradiction and of re-tradiction), is its habit of flying against the sistance to progress, in its most irritating and wind-a habit contrary to that adopted by strongly marked type-that of a domestic ty-ninety-nine out of every hundred birds. ranny, which is austere, peevish, and pickled in devotion. Thus the snipe, who makes a great deal of noise in the air as long as spring-time lasts, becomes suddenly silent when the mists of autumn rise, and soon turns its back on all it held dear, to seek a refuge in solitary marshes, where it may meditate and get fat in silence. It is also customary for noble sinneresses to wait till the age of folly is past before they return to prudent conduct and seek their salvation in a sombre retreat. may be doubtful whether the snipe's dead body, after drowning, do not float up the stream instead of down it; but one would incline to believe it, for the reason that Nature generally creates her moulds all in one piece, and that this incredible mania for going dead against the wind attests a determination to walk opposite to the indication of good sense, and to fly in the face of reason at all hazards. Such used to be the conduct-according to the account of husbands and other enemies of the fair sex-of a multitude of domestic tyrants, pious and peevish, who professed a love of God, solely to have the right of execrating their neighbour; who always waited to hear your opinion, in order that they might express a contrary one; who took a little too much pains about their own spiritual interests, and not enough about the personal comforts of those around them; who, in short, exerted their ingenuity in a thousand and one ways to make you curse your existence and long to be removed to a better world. This is a very hard saying, considering that it is a true one. The snipe wears a pelisse of fine materials, but not showy in point of colour, spotted with green sparkling dots. This costume is in imitation of the pious matrons who have ceased to care about making a display in dress, but who are not the less sensible to the comforts of silken stuffs, and who are fond of decorating their bosoms with amulets and holy medals. Metallic spots on plumage are always mirrors of illusion. Thus the mallard has his neck steeped in illusion touching the virtues of his female. The snipe's bright spots symbolise .the foolish hopes which agitate the imaginations of credulous persons. Several species of snipes have adopted The snipe's sad let teaches you what Provithe fashion of wearing strings of beads or ro-dence holds in store for all impracticable minds saries. The bird's long beak, which Nature has endowed with remarkable tactile sensibility, is the index of gourmandise. A vulgar prejudice, supported by the authority of Boileau Despréaux, attributes to devout stomachs avidities analogous to those of the snipe. Her brain is very compressed and her head is flattened at the sides. Her eyes, fixed on the top of her head and upturned towards the heavens, do not contribute to give her an intellectual physiognomy, although they attest her disregard for worldly affairs. Only, this eccentric disposition of the visual organs is the cause of the bird's being short-sighted and scarcely able to find its way. The snipe falls into every snare and allows lodged in narrow brain-boxes, for all deaf or blind cripples who persist in walking against the wind of progress. But how many people are there in the world who will listen to the voice of passional analogy? Lament for the snipe, the innocent victim of fatality; and to be just, let us not require any poor animal to commit suicide, especially when we see that, in the world of men, the heroes of devotion to the public welfare are so scarce that you may count them. We know that superior and energetic natures alone are capable of tasting the joys of sacrifice, and of exclaiming with the snipe-shooter, in a burst of sublime self-denial, "Perish the temporal, perish the snipe, perish all my own pleasures, so that Progress may march unchecked on her way!" A PORTRAIT IN THE NATIONAL ONE of the recently-acquired pictures in the National Gallery, is a portrait which at once rivets attention. It is reputed to be the work of Alessandro Bonvicino, commonly called "Il Moretto," the great master of whom Brescia is so justly proud; though it seems far more likely that it was by his pupil, Moroni. Brescia. It is the brief but eventful history of this nobleman, which, as I have gathered it from Italian and French sources, I mean to tell. adds, that Count Giorgio excelled even princes in liberality, which led him into expenses beyond his condition, though that was a noble one. Something, first of all, concerning Count Sciarra's father, which is essential to the story. His name was Giorgio, and by way of sobriquet, the French, with whom he greatly associated, called him "il superbo Italiano;" and the Brescian chronicler, Ottavio Rossi, who relates this fact, amongst others (Elogi Historici di Bresciani Illustri. Brescia, 1620), says of him that "there never yet was one who, in the rank of a private gentleman, equalled Count Giorgio Martinengo in greatness of soul;" and The picture represents a young man who may be that the inward qualities by which he was adorned about seven or eight-and-twenty years of age; he shone out from a majestic and beautiful counteis seated in a high-backed, red velvet arm-chair, nance, not less expressive of reverence for releaning his head upon his right hand, in an atti-ligion than for its high military bearing. He tude of deep thought; his face is handsome, but has somewhat of a sensual expression. It has a small moustache and beard of reddish brown, full lips, and a cheek slightly flushed, and in his In the long and bitter rivalry between Francis eyes which are large and unevenly set in his the First and the Emperor Charles the Fifth, head, the eyebrows being very wide apart-is Count Giorgio took the side of the French king; something not altogether to be trusted; either serving his cause, and afterwards that of his his nature is false, or a feeling is at work son Henry the Second, with great distinction as within which masters the effort to conceal it. a skilful condottiere. For this reason, and, as There are the traces, too, of dissipation on his the chronicler suspects, on account of a private features, and one can scarcely err in supposing pique, he made a deadly enemy of the famous that he has known some deep grief, the remem- Marquis del Vasto (otherwise du Guast); but brance of which cannot be swept away; neither he acquired, on the other hand, the close friendcan it be doubted that the original is one in ship of the no less celebrated Marshal Strozzi, whom a fixed and unalterable purpose is com- in whom, by the way, if the manner of his death bined with utter recklessness of the conse- be truly reported, reverence for religion was quences of any act he may be moved to perform. not the distinguishing characteristic; for it is From his costume, which is in the fashion of the said that when Strozzi, mortally wounded, was middle of the sixteenth century, it is evident lying in the agonies of death, he repelled the that he is of high rank. He wears a dark-green ghostly counsels of the Duke of Guise by saying quilted silk doublet, bordered with a narrow em- he supposed his fate would be that of everybody broidery of gold, and fastened with gold buttons for the last six thousand years. Strozzi was a that reach from the throat to the waist. A mere soldier, but Giorgio Martinengo was also black velvet cloak, very full at the shoulders, a man of letters, profound scholarship lending and puffed and slashed with ermine, with which its graces to his mind. The great qualities that fur it is faced, gives that peculiar squareness to were in him naturally excited the envy of his the figure which is noticeable in all the portraits contemporaries, but he could scarcely have been of the period. At his waist hangs a scarcello, the head of a proud and powerful Lombard or large purse, also of black velvet, lined with family without being the object of something ermine; his collar and the cuffs beneath his more than envy. We have the familiar instance doublet are of narrow point-lace; the golden hilt of an Italian vendetta in the immortal quarrel of his sword peeps from beneath his cloak; on of Verona, and the strife between the Brescian the little finger of his right hand is a ring of houses of Martinengo and Avogadro was not twisted gold; and upon the table which supports less fatal to them both. That Count Giorgio his arm are an antique bronze lamp or inkstand, was prompt and sudden in his revenge, is testia statuette of the same metal, and some small fied by the fact that he was known to have round boxes for holding medallions, such as Cel- accompanied the governor of Brescia to mass lini wrought, two or three of which are lying about. on one particular morning; to have killed on But the picture is not yet wholly described. There the same day at Padua (distant nearly a hunremains, to complete it, a black velvet hat with dred miles) an enemy of his brother, the Abbate a flowing white feather, the band like a string of Girolamo Martinengo; and again to have been golden wasps, and the brim, which is broad and seen early on the following morning in the turned up in front, decorated with an ornament principal square of Brescia, walking towards his of singular form. This ornament, closely exa- own palace. At the present time, with a railmined, shows an inscription in Greek cha-way between the two cities, the journey to and racters, and furnishes a key to the history of the fro is of easy accomplishment. In default of portrait, which is that of Count Sciarra Martinengo, the head-at the time he lived-of one of the most illustrious families of the city of steam, Count Giorgio employed relays of the fleetest horses, with which he was well provided, it being his custom always to keep a band of |