Bright sparks his black and rolling eyeball hurls,
Afar his tail he closes and unfurls.
On tiptoe rear'd, he strains his clarion throat,
Threaten'd by faintly answering forms remote.
Again with his shrill voice the mountain rings,
While, flapped with conscious pride, resound his
wings.

Are not the numbers melodious? Is not the
description charming ? Was there ever a prettier
amplification of cock-a-doodle-do-o-o-o?
But here he was the " monarch" " sweetly
ferocious" with a vengeance. I have heard ere now
the term " pitted against each other," and I
know not what may have been formerly the
practice in cock-fighting England; but in this
Algerian pit there did not seem to be any need
to excite the combatants for the fray. The two
owners stepped into the arena, each with his
bird in his hand. Solemn declarations were
made and written down as to the ages and prior
performances of the champions. Weights and
scales were then produced, and the birds were
duly weighed. The appointed judge subjected
them to a minute examination. Their spurs and
beaks were then rubbed with a lemon cut in
halves; they were put down at opposite corners
of the pit; and the owners, bowing to each
other, went to their places. Not a cry, not a
gesture, was used to excite the birds to the
attack. There was a quiet walk round the pit,
a few sidelong looks, a careful mutual examination
of the opposite party's general build and
make-up, then a rush, a rise on the wings,
another, another, then it seemed as though a small
feather-bed had been suddenly ripped up, and
the plumes scattered in all directions. Such a
furious clapperclawing, such a tooth and nail
exhibition of gameness! But not a crow was
heard. Not a cry, not a gasp even of pain.
The loudest sound audible was the rustling of
feathers. Then the rivals would emerge from
the downy cloud, walk round the pit again, and
eye and take stock of each other as before.
Then would come rush number two, and another
rise and another furious clapperclawing. And
so on, round after round for perhaps half an hour.

This journal not being Bell's Life in London,
I am absolved from chronicling the minutiae of
the various rounds. In the first fight, I may
remark that one of the birds, a black one, was
defeated early. Time was called; he could not
come up to it; he consequently lost the fight
and was put out of his misery, but not
contumeliously, by his owner. The victor expired
just as he was being handed over the barrier to
his triumphant proprietor. The next duel was
between a little grey fiend of a bird and a gaunt
white creature of most doleful mien. How
handicapping is managed in the Algerian Cock-
pit Royal I do not know; but there was evidently
a great disparity in bottom and bone between
these two. The pluck, however, of the gaunt
white creature was indomitable. He grew
rather wild after about eighteen minutes'
clapperclawing, and staggered rather than walked
round the pit, the little grey fiend strutting In
his side, and ever and anon whispering in his
ear, so it seemed, like an importunate bore, but
in reality finding out fresh tender parts about
the unhappy creature's head wherein to progue
him with his sharp beak. It was very horrible
to see this gaunt white creature gradually turn
first a streaky and then a complete crimson,
with the blood he lost. It was more horrible
wheu both his eyes were gone, and blind and
groggy, but undismayed, he still went reeling
about, occasionally closing with his enemy, and
clawing him. At last, in the twentieth round,
I think, the little grey fiend coolly went up to
the luckless white knight, looked in his face as
though he were laughing in it, and with one
trenchant blow of his beak cut the poor wretch's
throat. I am sure, by the blood that spurted
out, that the great artery had been severed.
The white cock balanced himself for a moment
on one leg, then threw back his head, gave one
smothered " cluck," and as sharply as a human
hand can be turned round from the position of
supination to that of pronation, fell over dead,
and turned his toes up. So may you have seen,
in the shambles, a bullock stricken by the
slaughterer's poleaxe. One stupid moment
motionless he stands, as though all unconscious
that his skull was cleft in twain, and that his
brains lay bare. But anon the quicksilver
current of dissolution searches every vein, aud
plumbs every nerve. The giant frame trembles,
the legs give way, and the great beast topples
over into so much beef.

Can any extenuation for the manifest cruelty
of this sport be found in the fact that the birds
in Spanish pits wear only their natural horny
pedal protuberances or spurs? This, like everything
else, is a moot point. The uninitiated
generally jump at the conclusion that a fight
with steel or silver spurs is much more
barbarous than one without. These sharpened
glaives, they argue, inflict the most hideous
gashes. On the other side, it may be shown
that when spurs are used, the fight is over much
sooner; and that spurs, besides, give an equality
of weapons to the combatants. A bird may be
of the same weight and age as his opponent, but
much overmatcned by him in adroitness aud
endurance; yet it will often happen that when
apparently at the last gasp, the bird who is
getting the worst of it may turn the tables by driving
his spur into his enemy's brain.

To others I leave the task of drawing a moral
from the tale I have told. As I went to the cock-
fight, and it was Sunday, I am, so far as moralising
is concerned, out of court.

LITTLE PEG O'SHAUGHNESSY.

IN TWO PARTS. PART II.

I CANNOT tell you what the reason was, but
certain it is that from that night forward Peg
O'Shaughnessy declined in my uncle's favour.
Some one else was presently asked to read the
newspaper, some one else was expected to hand
the coffee. Peg was soon totally dismissed from
the service, and some one else elected in her
place. And the some one else was my Lady
Fitzgibbon.

Tims discharged, Peg was as one adrift on the