dividual; so the bobolink, rice-bird, and rice- cient reason; in some instances they properly bunting; the chewink, swamp-robin, swamp- belong to different birds, but familiar names thrush, and oven-bird; the yellow-bird and and familiar observation is better at this stage goldfinch; the robin and red-breasted thrush; of our knowledge of Natural History than scithe wood-thrush, brown-thrasher, and north-entific classification. We must learn to distinern mocking-bird; the golden-winged wood-guish objects in Natural History as we distinpecker, and high-hole, the nuthatch, quank, guish foreigners, neighbors, and friends, by their and chickadee; the chip-bird, chip-sparrow, and looks and ways, and new instances by comparground-sparrow; the oriole, hanging-bird, and ison with the known. Among the birds, at Baltimore oriole; the shrike, butcher-bird, ty- least, there is not wanting to every variety some rant-bird, and blue jay-hawk, and others. well-defined peculiarity in flight, nests, food, or Many of these names are given without suffi- voice.

Renenston

THE political deeds and misdeeds of the

66

his long career-extending from the time of the paper and his personal character were intimately down to the present day-whichever way he associated. There may not at first sight seem went the English nation went with him. It is much connection between the stalwart octogena- hard to say whether his prodigious vitality was rian, wrapped in an old morning-coat, stalking the cause of his mode of life or the effect of it. over his lands in the early gray of the morning- Perhaps a little of both. Up to within a very directing which trees shall be felled, what fences few months of his death he entered into every repaired, suggesting an improvement here, an manly amusement with the zest of a youth of alteration there--and the powerful Minister to twenty. He watched the annual cricket-match whose words, only the day before, all Europe between the public schools of Eton and Harrow listened; but the two were inseparably allied. with as much interest as if only yesterday he Lord Palmerston's personal habits influenced was a boy among the Harrovians. In the yearhis statesmanship infinitely more than his states-ly Oxford and Cambridge University rowingmanship affected his personal habits. The vigor he derived from his healthy, athletic life he carried into his administration of public affairs; and much of the trust which the English nation reposed in their aged, self-willed Prime Minister was attributable to his hearty participation in all their sports, his identification with all their prejudices.

matches, the town in which his undergraduate days were passed could always claim him as the most devoted of its partisans.

On the race-course his beaming face and jaunty form were known and welcomed by every sporting man; and to have won the "blue ribbon of the turf" would have pleased the aged statesman better than half a dozen Parliamentary victories. He was very near doing it once with his horse "Mainstone," but at the last moment the "crack" broke down (not without sus

Palmerston, in fact, was a representative Englishman. Whatever his opinions were on a given subject, those opinions were pretty sure to be the opinions of the great bulk of the En-picion of foul play), and Palmerston was desglish nation. Whether he led the country, or, as is more reasonable to suppose, followed his instinctive notions of what the will of the people would be, this much is certain, that throughout

tined never to gain the wish of his heart. Though, like his great political opponent, Lord Derby-with whom in private life he was on the best of terms-he never betted upon his

his bold insubordination drew down upon him temporary and expected disgrace, the end in each instance was found to justify the means, and Palmerston returned to power more trusted and popular than before.

His endurance equaled his pluck. He would sit out the whole House of Commons in its longest debate. At two or three o'clock in the morning, after nine hours' mental strain, when perhaps the fate of his ministry hinged upon the division, he was the coolest and the freshest man in all the worn, excited throng, ever ready with some smart repartee or plausible explanation, and quick to notice and to parry every thrust which endangered the safety of his administration.

races, he took great interest in his stud, and frequently would gallop from Broadlands to his training-quarters at Danebury, twenty miles, over a very uneven country, before dinner. Once he left a debate in the House of Commons to speak to his trainer, John Day, at the door, about his Derby prospects. On that occasion Day, emboldened by his patron's good-humored familiarity, ventured on a little request of his own, which he preferred in these characteristic terms: "My lord, I've got a son I've brought up as a doctor, and he wants an appointment to a poor-law union. I had him' tried very high,' and he has won his trial very easy, and I'm sure you'll give it him." "To be sure, John," answered the kind-hearted Premier, who then shook hands with his visitor and turned on his With his boldness and endurance he united heel. Just as he was re-entering the House a wariness which few men ever overcame. Day shouted after him, to the intense delight | of all present, "Mind you write to the right man this time, my lord! Last time, you recollect, you didn't!"

Talleyrand pressed him hard during the Bel-
gian negotiations, and after many days of dip-
lomatic finessing, gave him up with the petu-
lant exclamation, that he was a man
"who
could not understand reasoning." In truth, it
is a moot point which of the two famous poli-
ticians was the more crafty. Talleyrand avowed-
ly used words to conceal his thoughts, and Palm-
erston cloaked under an exterior of frank good-
nature a degree of subtlety which often stretched
into the limits of duplicity. His genial temper-
ament, his manly vigor, and jocund wit, may
have blinded contemporaries to his faults, but
history will see in many of his political acts un-
scrupulous shiftiness, if not positive treachery.
The buoyant self-confidence which Palmerston
never lost carried him through the greatest dan-

If through pressing official business Palmerston was unable to be present at Ascot or Epsom, his trainer always had to write to him the same night how his horses ran; and this letter, conspicuous from John Day's big sprawling hand, was not the last opened over the breakfast-table. The Premier's countenance never wore so pleasant a smile as when he rose in the House of Commons to propose the usual adjournment over the Derby day, and the term, "Isthmian games," which he on one of these occasions so queerly misapplied to the great cockney holiday, has passed into a turf by-word. He was a sportsman from his boyhood. "Chris-gers. topher in his Sporting Jacket" had not a keener appreciation of the fun or a greater love of fair play than had "Old Pam." It was from these traits of character, and others, hereafter to be mentioned, that Palmerston acquired that ascendency over the British nation which rendered him almost despotic at home and made him feared abroad.

His wonderful pluck added largely to his popularity and success. He carried his dashing mode of treating difficulties into every transaction of his life. At cricket, boating, and all athletic exercises he was the boldest and most undaunted. "The hardest rider we ever had (an old master of Her Majesty's stag-hounds was wont to observe) was Lord Palmerston. How he didn't get to the bottom of his horses I can't say, but he never did, and he was always in at the death."

Palmerston "took" his political complications just as he did his fences. He rode at them, and ten to one he got clear over, while more timorous men were looking round for a gate. In this manner he accomplished the expulsion of Mehemet Ali from Syria, and the recognition of Napoleon's coup d'état-two of his most remarkable achievements-without consulting his colleagues in the ministry; and, in the latter case, in open opposition to the wishes of the court, he brought about these events, and though

Comparatively early in his career Earl Derby, with half the English aristocracy at his back, tried to crush him, but Palmerston laughed them down. He brought upon himself the hostility of the Queen by his attempts to choke off the back-stairs influence of German secretaries and princelings, which at that time was supposed to sway largely the proceedings of the English court, and by his tacit encouragement of the attacks which a portion of the British press made upon Prince Albert for his presumed interference in the Crimean difficulty. Yet no one showed more deep concern at his death than the Sovereign, whose minister he had been through the most momentous period of her reign. He offended the heir-apparent to the British throne by his overbearing assumption of authority, but he lived to receive the Prince and Princess of Wales as his guests at Cambridge House.

The pivot on which Palmerston's whole life turned was his acute sense of the practicaland no quality is rated more highly by practical Englishmen. He went to the same school as that brilliant vagrant, Lord Byron. He studied moral philosophy under the same Professor as Sydney Smith, Francis Jeffrey, Walter Scott, Lansdowne, and Brougham. He kept his terms at the same college as the gifted, shiftless Coleridge, of whose seductive intellect

Charles Lamb said that, to be within three miles of Coleridge, was as bad as a contagious fever. But Palmerston's intensely practical mind was led away by none of their gilded phantasies. If ever he gave reins to his fancy it was with a definite object in view. The blood of the Temples ran strong in his veins, and write he must occasionally. But it was in the form of political squibs, destined to serve a tangible and present purpose, that his cacoëthes scribendi manifested itself, and not in uncertain writing for posterity.

In conjunction with Sir Robert Peel and the cynical Wilson Croker he brought out a satirical paper, entitled the New Whig Guide, directed against the political party whom it was subsequently his lot to lead for nearly half a century. But the Whigs had Tom Moore, Sydney Smith, Jeffrey, and Brougham to pit against their literary assailants, and the Whig Guide had only a short life though a merry one. More successful was the jeu d'esprit Palmerston subsequently launched against his future colleague Brougham. The great Whig orator, attacking Mr. Ponsonby in the House of Commons, wound up a scathing philippic by denouncing him as an "old woman." Hereupon Palmerston got off an imaginary trial of Henry Brougham for a breach of the privileges of the House, which ended, after some most amusing evidence, in the jury finding the prisoner guilty, but (with peculiarly Palmerstonian humor) recommending him to mercy on the ground that he had previously vilified the Prince Regent.

Palmerston's best literary effort, however, in these early days of Toryism was a lampoon upon the Whigs for their treatment of Lord John Russell. It happened that on the very night set down for the reading of Russell's first reform bill Michael Angelo Taylor, one of the British wire-pullers of the period, gave a grand banquet, to which he invited all the leading Whigs. Strange to say most of them accepted the invitation, and left poor little Russell to declaim to empty benches. Hence Palmerston's clever satire, which is worth preserving:

MICHAEL'S DINNER; OR, STANCII FRIENDS TO
REFORM.

Fair Reform, Celestial Maid!

Hope of Britons, Hope of Britons!
Calls her followers to her aid;

She has fit ones, she has fit ones!
They would brave in danger's day
Death to win her, Death to win her!
If they met not by the way

Michael's dinner, Michael's dinner!

Lambton leads the Patriot van:
Noble fellow, generous fellow!

Quite the dandy of the clan,
Rather yellow, rather yellow!
Of fair liberty he tells

Tales bewitching, tales bewitching,
But they vanish when he smells
Michael's kitchen, Michael's kitchen!

Lawyer Brougham's next in rank;
Prates like Babel, prates like Babel;
He has never ate or drank

At brib'ry's table, brib'ry's table;

What, then, now, can stop his mouth
In this hot age, in this hot age?
'Tis, if he would tell the truth,
Michael's potage, Michael's potage.
Hobhouse, who pretends to nous,

Cur of Burdett, cur of Burdett,
Fir'd his pop-gun, but the House

Never heard it, never heard it.
He foresaw from Canning's lash,
Stripes too cutting, stripes too cutting,
So he sneak'd away to hash

Michael's mutton, Michael's mutton.

Where was on that famous night
Hume the surgeon, Hume the surgeon?
Who pretends to set us right

By constant purging, constant purging.
No division yet expecting,

Fond of work he, fond of work he,
At the moment was dissecting
Michael's turkey, Michael's turkey.
Ferguson his place may choose

In the bevy, in the bevy;
He's the real Taylor's goose,

Пlot and heavy, hot and heavy.
He'd outdo with sword and flame
Senna-cherib, Senna-cherib:
What that evening made him tame?

Michael's spare-rib, Michael's spare-rib.

Thus the social round they form

In Privy Gardens, Privy Gardens,
And they care about Reform

Not three-farthings, not three-farthings.
To yawn and vote let others stay
Who can bear it, who can bear it,
They, much wiser, drank away
Michael's claret, Michael's claret.

While ye thus, in claret, Sirs,

Lose your reason, lose your reason,
England will recover here,

Lost last season, lost last season.
Factious mobs, sedition's hordes,

Must grow thinner, must grow thinner,
When plain common sense records

Michael's dinner, Michael's dinner.
When he assumed official duties Palmerston,
still true to his practical bent, forsook the muse,
and took to writing dispatches. Some old houses
connected with the War Department were re-
cently pulled down in London, and no fewer
than eight or ten large bureaus were exhumed
filled with political papers in Palmerston's bold,
clear handwriting.

Restless energy was one of Palmerston's most salient characteristics, and was apparent in almost every act of his life. It took him more than twenty years to get rid of some of that surplus juvenility which in the main stuck to him to the last. From twenty-one years of age till forty-six he was the leading star in the fashionable world, and for some part of the same period Lady Cowper, his future wife, was the reigning belle. In Almack's exclusive salons "Cupid Palmerston" was reputed the best dancer of all the dandy throng. He danced the first waltz ever seen in England with the Countess Lieven, a fascinating spy of the Russian Government. Many a noble lady owned the charms of his handsome face and graceful form; and in after-years, when the mysterious Mr. O'Kane thought proper to sue for a divorce without having gone through the preliminary form of a marriage,

making Lord Palmerston the co-respondent in | but none had a greater knack than he of saying the suit, the recollection of these early amours memorable things on memorable occasions. The was revived.

Active exercise was a condition of his being. He could not even sit to write his dispatches. He invariably wrote standing, and all his most effective speeches were composed on horseback. Those who knew his peculiarities could always tell when a great debate was coming off. As he cantered along on his favorite gray his lips moved, and sometimes, when more than usually carried away by his theme, he broke into audible declamation. The clatter of his horse's hoofs served him for a running accompaniment of Parliamentary cheers; and as the debate waxed warmer the pace grew quicker, until at last the bewildered steed would be pulled up covered with foam, and rejoicing doubtless in his heart that for one day the imaginary debate had terminated to his rider's satisfaction.

During the Parliamentary session Palmerston almost invariably walked from the House of Commons to his home in Piccadilly-a two or three mile stretch. The early market gardener driving into town at four in the morning may often have noticed a solitary old gentleman "bowling along" at the top of his speed, using a mammoth umbrella for a walking-stick, and muttering to himself all the while, without suspecting that this strange pedestrian was the Premier of England.

successive stages of his career are marked as with mile-stones by notable expressions. In his first great speech on foreign affairs he drew upon himself the attention of all the struggling nationalities of Europe by declaring: "There are two great parties in Europe, one which endeavors to bear sway by the force of public opinion, another which endeavors to bear sway by the force of physical control. There is in nature no moving power but mind, all else is passive and inert. In private affairs this power is opinion, in political affairs it is public opinion; and he who can grasp this power with it will subdue the fleshy arm of physical strength and compel it to work out his purpose."

In another celebrated speech he declared himself the "Bottle-holder of oppressed nationalities." Hence arose the phrase "Judieious Bottle-holder," which Punch and the caricaturists often afterward applied to him. When he sent the British fleet to Athens in 1850 to enforce payment of some Jew's little bill his policy was attacked in both Houses of Parliament. He defended himself in an able speech, winding up his peroration by a comparison between the ancient citizens of Rome and the modern subjects of Great Britain, and asserting that so long as he held the seals of the Foreign Office British subjects, like the old Romans, should always be

feel assured of the protection of their Government. He won the day, and in like manner he triumphed over the opposition raised to a proposed increase in the British army by quoting the maxim, "If you would preserve peace prepare for war," and cast lasting ridicule upon the heterogeneous nature of the coalition which defeated him on the Chinese question by designating it a "Fortuitous concourse of atoms." Each and all of these phrases have since become indelibly associated with his name.

The umbrella was a feature in Lord Palmer-enabled to say, "Civis Romanus sum," and to ston's personnel. One of his Cabinet Ministers tells a ludicrous story about it: "The House was counted out early one summer's evening, and as their way home lay together he offered Lord Palmerston his arm. The offer was accepted. As he was the younger man he offered to carry the Premier's over-coat. Palmerston thanked him but declined to give it up. The Minister then insisted on carrying the umbrella. It was a very stout useful umbrella, well known in and about the House of Commons-quite Sairey Gampish, indeed, in its outline and proportions, a sort of gig umbrella cut down. In Lord Palmerston's hands it passed without notice. But the smarter and younger Cabinet Minister was painfully conscious, first of the attention it excited, and secondly of its unusual and inconvenient weight. He could compare it to nothing but a good thick 'blue book' tied to the end of a stick. Up Parliament Street, through the Horse Guards, and up the steps at the foot of the Duke of York's column they walked together, the umbrella seeming to get uglier and heavier at every step. The stout old Premier would have used it as a walking-stick or flourished it as a drum-major wields his baton. In his colleague's hands it was so much dead weight. He declared afterward he was never so glad to get rid of any thing in his life, and that whenever he gave Lord Palmerston his arm again he was particularly careful not to offer to carry his umbrella."

As a parliamentary orator Palmerston was inferior to Gladstone, Bright, Derby, or Disraeli;

A joke was a weapon in Palmerston's hands which he employed with immense effect. After the trial of Palmer "the Rugeley poisoner," as he was termed in the newspapers, had conferred upon the little Staffordshire town of Rugeley an unenviable notoriety, the Mayor and Burgesses, in council assembled, resolved to ask authority from Parliament to change the name of their native place. Accordingly a deputation waited upon the Premier with this object in view. Palmerston was occupied with important business at the time, and besides had a twinge of his old enemy, the gout. The Mayor and Common Council, however, were not to be denied, and were duly ushered into the Premier's presence. A glance at the bulky memorial they held in their hands and at the pompous visage of the chief spokesman of the party convinced the Minister of the infliction in store for him, unless he could in some way get rid of them; so with a pleasant smile he assured the deputation that he knew the nature of their request and was prepared to accede to it at once, on condition they