ly Owl, you blockhead!--why, they are the most
cheerful--joy-portending--and exulting of God's creatures! Their flow of
animal spirits is incessant--crowing-cocks are a joke to them--blue
devils are to them unknown--not one hypochondriac in a thousand
barns--and the Man-in-the-Moon acknowledges that he never heard one of
them utter a complaint.

But what say ye to an Owl, not only like an eagle in plumage, but equal
to the largest eagle in size--and therefore named, from the King of
Birds, the EAGLE OWL. Mr Selby! you have done justice to the monarch of
the Bubos. We hold ourselves to be persons of tolerable courage, as the
world goes--but we could not answer for ourselves showing fight with
such a customer, were he to waylay us by night in a wood. In comparison,
Jack Thurtell looked harmless. No--that bold, bright-eyed murderer, with
Horns on his head like those on Michael Angelo's statue of Moses, would
never have had the cruel cowardice to cut the weasand, and smash out the
brains of such a miserable wretch as Weare! True, he is fond of
blood--and where's the harm in that? It is his nature. But if there be
any truth in the science of Physiognomy--and be that of Phrenology what
it will, most assuredly there is truth in it--the original of that Owl,
for whose portrait the world is indebted to Mr Selby, and Sir Thomas
Lawrence never painted a finer one of Prince or Potentate of any Holy or
Unholy Alliance, must have despised Probert from the very bottom of his
heart. No prudent Eagle but would be exceedingly desirous of keeping on
good terms with him--devilish shy, i' faith, of giving him any offence
by the least hauteur of manner, or the slightest violation of etiquette.
An Owl of this character and calibre is not afraid to show his horns at
mid-day on the mountain. The Fox is not over and above fond of him--and
his claws can kill a cub at a blow. The Doe sees the monster sitting on
the back of her fawn, and, maternal instinct overcome by horror, bounds
into the brake, and leaves the pretty creature to its fate. Thank
Heaven, he is, in Great Britain, a rare bird! Tempest-driven across the
Northern Ocean from his native forests in Russia, an occasional visitant
he "frightens this isle from its propriety," and causes a hideous
screaming through every wood he haunts. Some years ago, one was killed
in the upland moors in the county of Durham--and, of course, paid a
visit to Mr Bullock's Museum. Eagle-like in all its habits,