itarianism are no longer admissible. The victim's thirst for blood is roused in the hopeless deathstruggle of self-defence, and despair howls like a wild beast. To return to the wolves, I can recommend, for the benefit of those who take a special interest in the wild-beast fauna of Siberia, the works of the conscientious Dostoiewsky. He is an authority, and his books are written with human blood

The big Parrot sitting on that perch over there sheds the one ray of light on this dark picture. There is no need for me to enter into the description of a parrot. Surely you know the subject well. This particular one hails, so we are told, from the New World; but one comes across a good many parrots in the Old World also. The parrot is a universal favourite, and is to be found in nearly every house. The parrot is not unhappy she is unconscious of the chain round her leg; she does not know that she was born with wings; she is undisturbed by any unnecessary brain activity; she eats, she sleeps, and she trims her gorgeous feather-cloak, and chatters ceaselessly from morning till night. Left to herself she is silent, for she is only able to repeat what others have said before; and this she has brought to such perfection, that often on hearing some one chatter, I have asked myself whether it be a human being or a parrot. .

The ragged, attenuated animal standing over there, and gazing at us with her soft sad eyes, is a Chamois, from Switzerland. The chamois is a rarity in a menagerie, for it is well known that she usually frets to death during the first year of her captivity. I look at the

poor animal with a feeling of oppression at the heart, which you can hardly realise. I have breathed the keen pure mountain-air myself, and I know why the chamois dies in prison. Those were other times, poor captive chamois, when you were roving on the Alpine meadows midst rhododendron and myrtillus, when on high over the precipices I saw your beautiful silhouette against the clear bright sky! No need had you of an alpenstock to reach those heights. Light as the winged bird, you played the aerial game of your graceful limbs amongst the rocks. Up to the realm of ice you led the way; high on the slopes of Monte Rosa has my clumsy human foot trod in the track of your smail mountain-shoes. Ay, those were other times, poor prisoner !—those were other times both for you and for me, and best it were to say no more about them!

Yonder stalwart muscular ape is a Baboon: "aged Abyssinian male" stands written over his cage. He sits there wrapped in thought, fingering a straw.

Now and then

Le casts a rapid glance around him, and he is not by any means so absent as his appearance would lead you to suppose. His expression is intelligent, but malevolent; its owner is a candidate for humanity.

When the negro approaches his cage, he shows him a row of teeth not so very dissimilar to his own

the family likeness between them is, for the matter of that, unmistakable. The negro cautions the public against accepting the wrinkled hand which the old baboon extends between the bars. I always treat him to an extra bit of sugar ever since the negro told me that he had one day

The

bitten off the thumb of an old woman who poked her umbrella at him. Besides, I look at him with a certain amount of veneration, for he comes from an illustrious fairily. Who knows whether he is not an ill-starred descendant of that heroic old baboon whom Brehm met in Abyssinia uegro is pretty sure to know nothg of that story, SO I may as well give it you. One day, while travelling in Abyssinia. the great German naturalist fell in with a Company of baboons, who, bound for a vast pile of rocks, were marching along a narrow defile. The rear had not yet reached the rocks when the huntsmen's dogs rushing forward barred their passage. Feeing the danger, the rest of the party, who had already reached the rocks, then descended in a body to the rescue of the attacked. and they screamed so desperately that the dogs actually fell back. The whole troop was now filing off in perfect order when the dogs were again set on. All the apes. however, reached the rocks in safety with the exception of one six-months' old baboon who happened to have lagged behind. Surrounded on all sides by the opened-mouthed dogs, he jumped with loud cries of distress ou to a neighbouring boulder. At this juncture a huge baboon stepped down from his rautago-ground for the second time, advanced aloue towards the stone on which the little one was crouching, patted him on the back. lifted him gently down, and carried him off triumphantly before the very mouths of the dogs, who were so surprised that they never even attempted to attack him.

It is not necessary to have read Darwin to pronounce that babooL a hero.

I have observed that even the
VOL. CXLVI.-NO. DCCOLXXXIX.

good-hearted public does not seein to feel much commiseration for the captive monkeys. The ape is playing in the menagerie the same rôle as Don Quixote in literature. The superficial observer conceives thom both as exclusively comical, and he has nothing but a laugh for thol. But the attentive looker-ou roalises that the monkey's solitary life behind the bars is nothing but a tragedy, as well as Cervantes' unmortal work is nothing but a mournful epic. And with tender emotion he feels an increasing sy inpathy mingling in his pitiful smile the more he gets to know of these two superannuated types: Don Quixote, the simple-minded would-be hero, still lagging on the scene long after chivalry has departed in the twilight of medieval mysticism; and the ape, the phantou from the evanescent animalworld, over whose hairy human features already falls the dawn of the First Man's birthday.

This baboon nay perhaps strike you as very ugly; but we must not forget that the perception of physical beauty is an entirely individual one, and it is very probable that the baboon on his side finds us very ugly. You cannot help smiling now and then while standing and watching him; but try not to let him be aware of your laughter, for, like all monkeys, it saddens and irritates him to be laughed at to his face. This old baboon is thoroughly unhappy, for as he has got more brains than the other animals in the menagerie, his capacity for suffering is greater --for there can bo uo doubt that suffering is an intellectual function. He alono realises the utter hopelessness of his situation, and the restless activity of his brain refuses him the relative oblivion which resignation vouchsafes to

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many others of his companions in distress. But as a compensation, he possesses one quality which the other animals lack, and it is the possession of this quality which saves him from falling into hypochondria: it is his sense of humour. That the monkey is a born humorist is a fact which no one who has had the opportunity of studying him in society -for instance, in zoological gardens-will deny. This sense of humour does not desert even the poor monkey imprisoned in a solitary cell; and sometimes when I have been standing here for a while watching the mimicry of this old baboon, I have involuntarily asked myself whether he were not making fun of me. . . .

The negro has brought his recital to an end, and it is now time for the show - piece of the evening to come off. The public is gathered in front of the lion-cage, its admiration divided between Brutus, the Nubian lion behind the bars, and the hero who, unarmed, is about to enter the cage. The lion-tamer throws off his overcoat, and the lion-king stands revealed in all the pride of pink tights, riding-boots, and his breast covered with decorations from Nubia likewise even these. He is small of stature, like Napoleon, and the constant intercourse with wild beasts has stamped his face with a rough and repulsive expression. He reeks of brandy to counteract the stale smell within the cage, and his pomatumed hair curls neatly round his narrow forehead. The negro hands him a whip, and the solemn moment is at hand. Stealthily he creeps into

the cage, and proudly he rouses the half-sleeping Brutus with a cut of his whip. The lion raises himself with a sullen roar, and,

hugging the walls, he begins to wander round his cage. Proudly the negro hands his master a hoop, and wearily and dejectedly Brutus jumps through it. Proudly the lion king raises his whip, and, obedient like a dog, Brutus leaps over it. Brutus is not in good spirits to-night-he does not roar as he ought. Things look up, however, towards the latter part of the performance, when the lionking, standing in one corner of the cage, paralyses Brutus with a proud look just as he is about to attack him: Brutus is no longer obstinate-he roars irreproachably and shows his yellowed fang. A few half-smothered cries of alarm are heard from the audience, an old woman faints, a pistol is fired off, while the lion-king, under cover of the smoke, hurriedly but proudly creeps out of the cage.

Captive lion, have you then forgotten that once you were a king yourself, that once there was a time when all men trembled at your approach, that silence reigned supreme when your imperious voice rang through the forest? Fallen monarch, awake from out thy thraldom's degradation, rise to battle, and let the thunder of thy royal voice be heard once more!

Brutus, Brutus, vindicator of lost liberty, thou art too proud for slavery such as this!

Rend thou asunder the chains which human cunning hath bound around the latent force of thy limbs!

Shake thou that lion-mane of thine, and, strong as Samson in thy mighty wrath, bring down thy prison walls about thee, and bid them crush the Philistines assembled here to jeer at the inpotence of their once dread enemy!

Brutus, Brutus, vindicator of lost liberty!

My earliest recollections of FitzGerald go back to thirty years. He and my father, the late Archdcacon Groome, were old friends and neighhours-in East Suffolk. where neighbours are few, and fourtcon miles counts for nothing. They never were great correspondents, for what they had to say to one another they said mostly by word of mouth. So there were notes, but no letters; and the notes have nearly all perished. In the summer of 1859 we were staying at Aldeburgh, a favourite place with my father, as the home of his forefathers. They were sea-folk; and Robinson Groome, my great-grandfather, was owner of the Unity lugger, on which the poet Crabbe went up to London. When his son, my grandfather, was about to take orders, he expressed a timid hope that the bishop would deem him a proper candidate. "And who the devil in hell," cried Robinson Groome, "should he ordain if he doesn't ordain you, my dear?" This 1 have heard my father tell FitzGerald, as also of his "Aunt Peggy and and Aunt D." (i.e., Deborah), who, if ever Crabbe was mentioned in their hearing, always smoothed their black mittens and remarked · "We never thought much of Mr Crabbe."

Our house was Clare Cottage, where FitzGerald himself lodged long afterwards. "Two little rooms. enough for me; a poor civil woman pleased to have me in

them." It fronts the sea, and is (or was) a small two-storeyed house, with a patch of grass before it, a suininer-house, and a big white figurehead. belike of the shipwrecked Clare. So over the garden -gate FitzGerald leant one June morning, and asked me, a boy of eight, was my father at home.

I remember him dimly then as a tall sea-browned man, who took us boys out for several sails, on the first of which I and a brother were both of us wofully sea-sick. Afterwards I remember picnics down the Deben river, and risits to him at Woodbridge, first in his lodgings on the Market Hill over Berry the gunsmith's, and then at his own house, Little Grange. The last was in May 1883. My father and I had been spending a few days with Captain Brooke of Ufford, the possessor of one of the finest private libraries in England. From Ufford we drove on to Woodbridge, and passed some pleasant hours with FitzGerald. We walked down to the river-side, and sat on a bench at the foot of the limetree walk. There was a small boy, I remember, wading among the ooze; and FitzGerald, calling him to him, said "Little boy, did you never hear tell of the fate of the Master of Ravenswood?" And then he told him the story. At dinner there was much talk, as always, of many things, old and new, but chiefly old; and at nine we started on our homeward drive.