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vegetable substance.

At present his daily rations are eight quarts of ground oats, three quarts of split beans, and about a bushel of bran and some turnips, &c.

About the hour of dinner-four o'clock-our "fat friend" grows very fidgety, and displays a restless anxiety which strikes the spectator the more owing to the bulk of the creature. A dog, when eager for food, opens his mouth, and seems to lick with anticipation, and not unfrequently yawns and whines; but our readers can have no idea of the yawn of a hungry hippopotamus unless he has seen it, or of its cry of impatience, which it utters through its nostrils-a blast like the sound of two trumpets suddenly stifled,—an unmistakeable "dinner-bell." If we remember right, its mouth is figured in an old painting of the Last Judgment at Hampton Court, as the entrance of "the place of the wicked." The artist must have looked into the actual gape of a ravenous riverhorse, otherwise he could not have imagined so striking a portal, with its four outstanding incisors. With all his impatience we were not a little pleased with the creature's docility the last time we looked at him. The keeper, who had some preparations to make, firmly told him, "I do not want you yet," and the hippopotamus "turning tail," quietly descended into the water, and veered round his island of a head, the protruding and somewhat melancholy eye constantly directed towards the feeding-place; but no sooner did he hear the retiring footsteps of his friend than out he waddled, and forthwith his immense sleek body was stationed at the trough,-a magnificent example of fore-shortening to the lookers-on.

He sleeps irregularly, sometimes three or four hours at a time, and sometimes all night through. With all his playfulness, for he is always ready for a romp with his keeper, concluding with a mighty plunge into the water, there is, nevertheless, in his countenance a disappointed and some

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what melancholy expression, as if he remembered his liberty, and longed for a nocturnal ramble in the society of his fellows. With his curious eyes he can see that the giraffes in the adjoining paddock are not solitary; and if hippopotami can reason, he may wonder why he, too, has not a thickskinned companion of his own kind and species.

Dr. Smith well describes this massive creature, when he says that its entire contour "suggests to the observer the idea of a form intermediate between an over-grown pig and a high-fed bull, without horns and with cropped ears." The lips are very thick and bulging, the sides especially protrude, so that when the mouth is shut even the longest of the teeth are hid from view. The eyes are placed very high, a character, which, with the short ears, contributes much to give the hippopotamus its very peculiar physiognomy. It seems to have the power of protruding its eyes, and like the seals, it can completely close its nostrils when under water. Professor Owen* well remarks, that its "wide mouth is chiefly remarkable for the upward curve of its angles towards the eyes, which gives a quaintly comic expression to the massive countenance." Full-grown specimens are nearly twelve feet long, and almost five feet high at the shoulder; and some travellers describe them as attaining even a greater length than this. The legs are short and very thick, and the body so very thick and bulky that the middle of the belly almost touches the ground. The skeleton to support the flesh, skin, and intestines of such a creature, is well described in the words of Job, "His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron." The great thickness of the skin, impenetrable at times even to a sabre-cut, seems alluded to in the words, "He that made him can make his sword to approach him."

* Annals of Natural History.

A. W.

HOW THEY FOUND THEIR WAY TO

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

THERE is, probably, no cemetery in the world so impressive as Westminster Abbey. To compare it with our nearest and greatest neighbour: Père-la-Chaise contains a larger number of recent celebrities; but St. Denis is reserved for princes, and the Pantheon is empty. Here, however, the same roof covers kings and commoners, and sleeping monarchs are surrounded by the intellectual magnates of their realm; whilst through the strong and steady ages the links of glory go back unbroken to the Tudors and Plantagenets, and are hardly lost in the tomb of the Confessor.

It is almost a pity that the ordinary entrance is by the south-eastern transept. To most visitors Poets' Corner is more splendid than Henry the Seventh's Chapel, and more sacred than the shrine of St. Edward; and instead of being the vestibule, it ought to be the inmost adytum, where the tour of "all the glories" should terminate.

Such poets, too, as that Corner commemorates! It is only the land which claims Petrarca, Ariosto, Dante, and Tasso, which can name a quaternion like Chaucer, and Spenser, and Shakspeare, and Milton. And what a country is the land which produced them! Holland can work, and Germany can speculate; France can fight, and Italy can sing; but there is no Dutch Shakspeare, no German Newton, no Gallic Watt, no Tuscan Wellington. It is the favour of Providence, and it is the Anglo-Saxon felicity, that British mind is capable of such manifold development. And far from eclipsing their glory, it only renders more majestic the repose of bards like Chaucer and Spenser and Dryden that they rest beneath the same canopy with scholars and heroes

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and statesmen like Casaubon and Heylin, William the Third and General Wolfe, Chatham and Canning and Wilberforce; for that honour is greatest which is rendered by greatness, and the value of a national monument depends on the worth of the nation which rears it.

The last minstrel whose monument has been erected in Poets' Corner is Robert Southey; the last whose coffin has been there deposited is Thomas Campbell. None, we think, will dispute the right of either to such a high distinction; but it is a question of some interest how they earned it. How came the sons of a Bristol tradesman and of a decayed Glasgow merchant to earn a niche in this mighty mausoleum?

It is easy to answer, They were poets. And with some it is a favourite theory that poets are born ready-made. Like meteorites, or like the image that fell down from Jupiter, they drop direct from the firmament, and some morning they "wake up and find themselves famous."

But, however well this theory may account for Homer and Shakspeare, and those others whose mental history is as obscure as their fame is transcendant, it is hardly borne out by modern and well-known instances. The adage "Poeta nascitur, non fit," is only a half-truth. At least, in these latter days, a man must not only be born a poet, but he must make himself one to the bargain.

Of successful painstaking the world of letters furnishes few examples more encouraging than Southey. Doubtless he had an ear for rhythm and a turn for romance; but the wild wonder of "Kehama" and the music of "Thalaba" were not the creation of a summer's day. Even "Joan of Arc," the most crude of all his compositions, though written in six weeks, was not published till six months had been spent in its revision; and with all its ruggedness of language and its awkwardness of structure, its first edition is now mainly

valuable as an instructive example of the progress which genius is sure to make when discontented with its own performances and intent on the highest excellence. One great charm of Southey's poems is the dramatic interest of the story, to which full effect is given by the vivid clearness of the narrative. But even this constructive talent was the reward of infinite labour. Late in life he says, "The facility and pleasure with which I can plan a heroic poem, a drama, and a biographical or historical work, is even a temptation to me. It seems as if I caught the bearings at first sight; just as Telford sees from an eminence, with a glance, in what direction his road must be carried. was long before I acquired this power,-not fairly, indeed, till I was about five or six-and-thirty; and it was gained by practice, in the course of which I learnt to perceive wherein I was deficient."

But it

In classic times and in our own earlier history, there was no distinction between the army and navy; but, when need required, the soldier became a fighting seaman. In the realms of scholarship, the division of labour still admits of an amphibious authorship; but the instances are not numerous where, like Octavius and Alfred, the hero has gathered laurels on either element. Perhaps it would be a better metaphor to say that the instances are few where the rider of Pegasus has dismounted and shown himself a nimble or graceful pedestrian. But Southey is one example. From verse he stooped to prose; and this last he wrote so well that Byron called it "perfect." It was at least so good that it added to his fame. There are stars so near to one another that it needs a telescope to perceive that there are two; and the two united make up a high magnitude, which neither, if separate, could have claimed. In the galaxy of authorship it may be that the laureate's "Portugal" is not the greatest of histories, nor "Madoc" the greatest of epics; but both are

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