ons, one is inclined to forgive him on account of the
quaint gracefulness and point of his style. When Mr. Burchell says,
"This rule seems to extend even to other animals: the little vermin
race are ever treacherous, cruel, and cowardly, whilst those endowed
with strength and power are generous, brave, and gentle," we scarcely
stop to reflect that the merlin, which is not much bigger than a
thrush, has an extraordinary courage and spirit, while the lion, if
all stories be true, is, unless when goaded by hunger, an abject
skulker. Elsewhere, indeed, in the _Animated Nature_, Goldsmith gives
credit to the smaller birds for a good deal of valour, and then goes
on to say, with a charming freedom,--"But their contentions are
sometimes of a gentler nature. Two male birds shall strive in song
till, after a long struggle, the loudest shall entirely silence the
other. During these contentions the female sits an attentive silent
auditor, and often rewards the loudest songster with her company
during the season." Yet even this description of the battle of the
bards, with the queen of love as arbiter, is scarcely so amusing as
his happy-go-lucky notions with regard to the variability of species.
The philosopher, flute in hand, who went wandering from the canals of
Holland to the ice-ribbed falls of the Rhine, may have heard from time
to time that contest between singing-birds which he so imaginatively
describes; but it was clearly the Fleet-Street author, living among
books, who arrived at the conclusion that intermarriage of species is
common among small birds and rare among big birds. Quoting some lines
of Addison's which express the belief that birds are a virtuous
race--that the nightingale, for example, does not covet the wife of
his neighbour, the blackbird--Goldsmith goes on to observe,--"But
whatever may be the poet's opinion, the probability is against this
fidelity among the smaller tenants of the grove. The great birds are
much more true to their species than these; and, of consequence, the
varieties among them are more few. Of the ostrich, the cassowary, and
the eagle, there are but few species; and no arts that man can use
could probably induce them to mix with each other."

What he did bring back from his foreign travels was a medical degree.
Where he got it, and how he got it, are alike matters of pure
conjecture; but it is extremely improbable that--whatever he might
have been willing to write home from Padua or Lou