FRASER'S

GOOD

THAT 'fine feathers make fine

birds' is so self-evident an adage as to admit of no dispute by the most argumentative of cavillers; but that fine feathers make happy birds is a different story altogether, and one which will bear a considerable amount of discussion pro and con.

Up two pair of stairs in yonder large London house, poised over a box of fragrant mignionette, and commanding the comparatively extensive view of the square gardens, hangs a shining gilt bird-cage, with bath and sanded floor complete; perches for exercise, trays for hempseed and other delicacies, a graceful festooning of groundsel, and a lump of white sugar between the bars. Prison, forsooth! it's a palace; and would its inmate, that bright yellow canary-bird, sing so loudly, think you, if she wasn't happy? Don't we know that the bravest voice and the noisiest laugh are unerring indicators of heartsease and content? At least the world is well satisfied to take them as such; and surely plenty of birdseed, and sand, and groundsel, and VOL. LXIII. NO. CCCLXXIII.

white sugar, are an equivalent for that imaginary blessing which men term liberty. "Tis a sad heart that sighs for the 'wings of a dove;' the canary don't want any wings, she has no use even for her own glossy yellow pair; and for liberty, why she wouldn't know what to do with it if she had it. 'Tis only on a day like this, when the May sunshine bursts forth into somewhat of summer warmth, when the tender green leaves, as yet unsmirched by London smoke, quiver in the breath of spring, and the fleecy clouds dance against the blue sky even over Belgrave-square, that the cage looks a little narrow and confined, that the vagrant life of yonder dirty sparrow appears somewhat enviable. It must be joyful to be free to perch on the area-railings, or to sip from the muddy kennel, and twitter away at will over chimney and house-top, into the fragrant hedgerows and sunny fields of the pleasant country. But then he is but a common sparrow, after all, and she is a delicate canarynoblesse oblige indeed in many more ways than one.

A

What thinks her high-born mistress, the Lady Gertrude, an earl's sister and a sovereign's god-child? With the wholesome fear of Burke and Debrett before my eyes, I supΙ press the proper name of the noble maiden. Shall I involve myself in an action for libel at the suit of a distinguished family? Shall I pander, to the morbid taste of that numerous and respectable class who make it their especial study to identify the persons of the aristocracy and chronicle their deeds? Vade retro-be it far from me! The titled daughters of England are classed and ticketed in certain catalogues published by authority, with mercantile fidelity. With the same accuracy that is at once his pride and his profession, in measuring her off a thousand yards of tulle for the trimming of her ball-dress, can John Ellworthy, the mercer, calculate to a day the age of Lady Hildegonda Vavasour. Her Ladyship is debarred by the remnants of feudalism from the very birthright of lowlier women, never to exceed seven-and-twenty. Like those high-bred Arab steeds which the children of the desert offer for purchase to the Feringhee, there can be no concealment of her age or her performances; and she is sold, so to speak, with her pedigree about her neck. Be gentle with her in her new capacity; like all thorough-bred animals she is stanch and resolute for good and for evil.

Lady Gertrude is alone in the privacy of her own chamber. Bedroom, dressing-room, boudoir, sanctuary, it combines something of all of these. Her midnight slumbers and her morning dreams take place in a deep and distant recess, containing a charming little French bed, like a toy, draped with a rosy fabric of muslin, corresponding in colour and texture with the toilet-cover and the pincushion. Her prayer-book of purple velvet, crossed and clasped, and bound and bedizened with gold, lies within easy reach of the lace-edged pillows, and where male imbecility would look instinctively for a bootjack, a pair of sweet little slippers,

fawn-coloured, with bronze tips and beaded embroidery, turn their toes to each other in confiding simplicity. A pianoforte occupies the corresponding recess at the other side of the doorway. A piece of music lies open on its stand; it is an oratorio of Handel's, a deep, solemn, and suggestive strain, such as to sit and hear with half-shut eyes from which the tears are not far distant, calls up a vision of the shadowy Future and the mournful Past, of the bruised reed and the aching heart, of hopes and fears, and bitter sorrow, and humble resignation, and the white-robed angels leading the poor penitent home.

She is not all frivolous, you see, my Lady Gertrude, though the canterbury by the side of the instrument contains the Ratcatcher's Waltz and the 'Pray don't' Polka, and other refined and popular music of the modern school.

Her book-shelves, too, bear a strange mixture of literature, light and heavy, ancient and modern. No Byron, no Tommy Moore. A quarto Milton, we dare not say thumbed, but worn and frayed by the taper white fingers, and holding even now between the pages of Satan's rebellious peroration a single thread of hair, denoting that while Justine dresses the silken locks, Lady Gertrude is no less busy than her handmaid with the inner culture of that haughty little head. A voluminous Shakspeare with notes, a translation of Herodotus, Swedenborg's Transcendental Lucubrations; Euclid, which she cannot understand, but perseveres at from sheer obstinacy, even to the hopeless and utterly futile task of learning him by heart; Schiller in the original, whom she don't much care about; Tennyson's Maude, that she would never confess she cries over like a child; sundry excellent works of reference on Chemistry, Optics, Geology, and other sciences two or three odd volumes of Sermons, new and stiff in the binding, as if but rarely consulted; and a French novel, doubtless contraband, and having no business