and geese had more of his guest's company
than he himself had. And why was this?
We get the answer from Addison in his
proper person. He was "infinitely delighted,"
he tells us, "with those speculations of
nature which are to be made in a country–
life." And, he says further : "as my reading
has very much lain among books of
natural history, I cannot forbear recollecting
upon this occasion the several remarks
which I have met with in authors, and
comparing them with what falls under my
own observation."

Humph! There is something to think
about, in that. What was said in the
natural history books whose leaves the
philosopher fingered? What were the facts
that had fallen under his own grave eyes?
He had not seen Goldsmith's Animated
Nature. The gentle author of that
delicious piece of unreal reality, was not born
when the hands of the equally gentle Clio
had become cold and rigid, and were
prevented by death from holding even the most
cherished volume in their grasp again.
But he had read of the giraffe, an Asian
beast; and of the hyæna, a subtle ravenous
beast; and of the sea–devil, a strange
monster on the coasts of America; and of
the aposta, a creature in America, so great
a lover of men that it follows them, and
delights to gaze upon them. He had read,
too, of the crane, a fowl in America of a
hideous form, having a bag under the neck
which will contain two gallons of water;
and of the yandeu, the great ostridge in the
island of Maraguana, a fowl that exceeds
the stature of a man; and of hags, a kind of
fiery meteor which appears on men's hair,
or on the manes of horses; and of the javaris,
a swine in America, which has its stomach
on its back! Everybody read of these
things in Addison's time. They were
in all the dictionaries, Bailey's among
them. And as for comparing these rare birds
and beasts with what Addison had himself
observed—listen. One of the soberest papers
of the Spectator tells us that gentlemen–
birds "determine their courtship by the
single grain or tincture of a feather:" that
each intending bridegroom, as is repeated in
verse,

            Cautious, with a searching eye, explores
        The female tribes, his proper mate to find
        With kindred colours mark'd!

Just, we suppose, as shopping ladies match
silks, and wools, and ribbons, rejecting all
that vary by the shadow of a shade! So
Locke (there is no mistake, it is veritably
Locke of the Human Understanding),
speaks acceptingly of what is "confidently
reported of mermaids or sea–men." He
refuses, modestly, to run his rapier through
the whole notion, and whisk it off, exploded.
He rather relished it. Perhaps he and
Addison both gloried in the conception of
vast oceanic nations, consisting of
merwomen and mermen (with whom there
must have been, of course, shoals of tender
little water–babies), among whom there
would have been employment for the saw–
fish they both believed in, described as a
sea–fish having a sharp–toothed bone, like a
saw, in his forehead, about three feet long!
This, it is clear, would have been the ready–
implemented carpenter, who could have
fashioned out marine parades, and have
sliced coral–reefs to embellish them, and
have never wanted wages to buy a fresh
tool. Could there not have been utilisation
also in these regions, of the unicorn–whale?
A fish eighteen feet long, having a head
like a horse, and scales as big as a crown
piece, and having six large fins like the end
of a galley oar, and a horn issuing out of
the forehead nine feet long, so sharp as to
pierce the hardest bodies? Surely the
Zoological Gardens are a teasing and a tyrannous
tether to us, without which we could revel
in the pleasures of imagination and fear no
mental and rational disturbance! Could
we now, having the knowledge gained in
those cruel paths to guide us, walk in Sir
Roger's fields with the same hope that the
Spectator had? He—while the gentlemen
of the country were stealing a sight of him
over a hedge, and doing it cautiously,
because the host whispered it was hateful to
him to be stared at—he might have hoped
to have the luck to espy a shrew–mouse, a
field–mouse of the bigness of a rat and colour
of a weasel, very mischievous to cattle,
which going over a beast's back would make
it lame in the chine, and its bite caused
the beast to swell to the heart and die. He
might have resolved, if he had come up
with this inconvenient little animal, to
have stepped forward valiantly and killed
it, lest Sir Roger's beasts should become
chine–lame, and his good friend be that
much the poorer. Alas! we can have no
such excitement, no such benevolent intention.
Neither, if we were ruminating over
the trees whose bark Sir Roger had carved
with his capricious widow's name, could
we expect to have floating by us virgin's
thread, a ropy dew which flies in the air like
small untwisted silk or gossamer, thin
cobweb–like exhalations, which fly abroad in hot
sunny weather, and are supposed to rot