heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no way impaired, because he is not content to exchange his free air and exercise for the restraints of a poor-house, he is expiating his contumacy in one of those houses (ironically christened) of correction. Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance which called for legal interference to remove? or not rather salutary, and a touching object, to the passers-by in a great city? Among her shows, her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping curiosity-(and what else but an accumulation of sights-endless sights-is a great city, or for what else is it desirable?) was there not room for one Lusus (not Naturæ, indeed, but) Accidentium?"

Here is an engraving of a raree-show man a hundred and fifty years ago. In that box he has stores for the curious, such as the more ancient showman bore about-for that grotesque old fellow was once a modern. In 'The Alchymist,' the master of the servant who has filled the house with searchers for the philosopher's stone speculates thus :

And he adds

"What should my knave advance

To draw this company? he hung out no banners
Of a strange calf with five legs to be seen,

Or a huge lobster with six claws?"

་་

May be, he has the fleas that run at tilt

Upon a table."

Tempest's raree-show man (Caulfield tells us he was known by the name of Old Harry) had the fleas that run at tilt ;" and he had also a tame hedgehog and a wonderful snake. Not many years ago "the industrious fleas" were exhibited as proper examples to the rising generation. Nor ought the wise and the learned to laugh at these things. If the industry of the fleas be somewhat questionable, there can be no doubt that their instructor had been sufficiently laborious. They say that dancing-bears are made by setting the poor animals upon a heated iron floor; but the habit is retained through that wonderful power

of discipline by which the eye and the voice of man become supreme over the inferior animals. There must have been a thorough inter-communication of ideas between the lords of the creation and the baboon that played on the guitar -the ape that beat his master at chess in the presence of the King of Portugalthe elephant which Bishop Burnet saw play at ball-and the hare which beat the tabor at Bartholomew Fair. Our ancestors delighted in such street sights, and not unwisely so. In the age of Elizabeth and James new countries had been explored; travelling to far distant lands had become common; and thus, he that brought home" a dead Indian" or "a strange fish" was sure to be rewarded. "Were I in England now (as once I was), and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver; there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian." So learned Trinculo, in the Tempest,' reprehends our countrymen. But they were not far wrong, if wrong at all. To see these wonders disabused them of many erroneous notions; and if their credulity was sometimes stimulated, their general stock of knowledge was increased. It was believed up to the middle of the seventeenth century that the elephant had no joints in its legs, and that it never lay down. An elephant was shown about kneeling and lying down, and the belief vanished. Sir Thomas Brown wishes for more such street sights, lest the error should revive in the next generation. Exhibitions of docility, such as elephants offer to us, are good for the multitude. A due appreciation of what may be effected by the combination of perseverance in man and of sagacity in a brute indicates a philosophical spirit in a people. Banks's horse was the great wonder of Elizabeth's time. He and his master have even found a niche in 'Raleigh's History of the World:'-" If Banks had lived in older times, he would have shamed all the enchanters in the world; for whosoever was most famous among them could never master or instruct any beast as he did." This famous animal was a bay gelding, and he was named Morocco. Here is his picture,

preserved also for the admiration of all ages. In Love's Labour's Lost,' Moth, puzzling Armado with his arithmetic, says, "The Dancing Horse will tell you." Hall, in his Satires,' notices

66

"Strange Morocco's dumb arithmetic."

Sir Kenelm Digby informs us that Banks's horse "would restore a glove to the due owner after the master had whispered the man's name in his ear; and would tell the just number of pence in any piece of silver coin, newly showed him by his master." The Sieur de Melleray, in the notes to his translation of the Golden Ass' of Apuleius, tells us that he saw this wonderful horse in the Rue St. Jacques at Paris; and he is astonished that the animal could tell how many francs there were in a crown, but his astonishment was measureless that, the crown being then of a depreciated currency, the horse should be able to tell the exact amount of the depreciation, in that same month of March, 1608. Banks had fallen among a people who did not quite understand how far the animal and his keeper might employ the language of signs; and he got into trouble accordingly. The better instructed English multitude had been familiar with "Holden's camel," famed for ingenuous studies;" and they had seen Morocco himself go up to the top of St. Paul's. Though they lived in an age of belief in wizards, they had no desire to burn Banks as a professor of the black art. But he had a narrow escape in France; and his contrivance for the justification of his horse's character and his own shows him to have been as familiar with the human as with the brute nature. The story is told by Bishop Morton :-" Which bringeth into my remembrance a story which Banks told me at Frankfort, from his own experience in France among the Capuchins, by whom he was brought into suspicion of magic, because of the strange feats which his horse Morocco played (as I take it) at Orleans, where he, to redeem his credit, promised to manifest to the world that his horse was nothing less than a devil. To this end he commanded his horse to seek out one in the press of the people who had a crucifix on his hat; which done, he bade him kneel down unto it; and not this only, but also to rise up again and to kiss it. And now, gentlemen (quoth he), I think my horse hath acquitted both me and himself;' and so his adversaries rested satisfied; conceiving (as it might seem) that the devil had no power to come near the cross." The people of Orleans were imperfectly civilized; but Banks and Morocco were destined to fall into barbarous hands. We have no precise record of his fate; but some humorous lines of Jonson have been accepted as containing a tragical truth:

"But 'mongst these Tiberts*, who do you think there was?

Old Banks the juggler, our Pythagoras,

Grave tutor to the learned horse; both which,

Being, beyond sea, burned for one witch,

Their spirits transmigrated to a cat."

It appears to us that Banks's horse, and Holden's camel, and the elephant that expressed his anger when the King of Spain was named, must have had a considerable influence in repressing the bear-baiting cruelties of that age. These were among the street sights sanctioned by royal authority. The patent to Henslowe and Alleyn, the players, constituting them "Masters of the King's

#Cats.

Games," in 1604, authorises them "to bait, or cause to be baited, our said bears, and others being of our said games, in all and every convenient place or places, at all times meet;" and accordingly the Masters of the Royal Games put down all unlicensed bearwards, and filled the town and country with their performances. This is an illustration of Master Slender's pertinent question to Mistress Ann Page, "Why do your dogs bark so? be there bears i' the town?"

Bull

It is a blessing that we have now no such street sights as bear-baiting. baiting, too, is gone: cock-fighting is no more seen. Pugilism has made a faint attempt at revival; but we can part with that too. Are the people, then, to have no amusements accessible to all? Are the street sights to be shouldered out by commerce and luxury, and not a recreation to be left? We answer, let a wise government double and treble the class of healthful exercises, and of intellectual gratifications. Give us new parks if possible. Let us have gardens in which all may freely walk. Open our cathedrals, as the National Gallery and Hampton Court are opened. Instead of sending all the rare animals which are presented to the Crown to be shown for a shilling by one society, have menageries in Hyde Park and the Regent's Park. Take an example from the man who, when the planets are shining brightly out of a serene heaven, plants a telescope in Leicester Square or St. Paul's Church Yard, and finds enough passengers who are glad to catch glimpses of worlds unseen to the naked eye, and forget for a moment, in the contemplation of the mighty works of Omnipotence, the small things which surround us here. Open the great books of Nature, of Science, and of Art to the people; and they will not repine that the days of conjurers, and puppet-shows, and dancing bears have passed away.

IN the Description of the Monument,' sold by its keeper, we are told the view from the top "is extremely fine and extensive, and in fact not to be equalled;" and no doubt the prospect is correctly described when we can see it: a matter of not very common occurrence. In provokingly close neighbourhood to the foregoing passage we find a statement of the hours of admission, from which it appears the Monument is open from eight in the morning from Lady-day to Michaelmas-day, and the remainder of the year from nine, till sunset. Thus, the only period when London can be properly seen, that of sunrise, when, in the noble lines of Wordsworth,-

"Earth has not anything to show more fair.
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty.
This city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky,

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air!"