in old comic cartoons, or in Les Anglaises pour rire. Dress must run its course: it has its cycles like the stars, its ebb and flow like the tides; and all the preachers, law-makers, and censors of the earth have never been more able to thwart or stem its course, than dear old Mrs Partington to sweep away the broad Atlantic from her cottage-door. HOME FROM THE COLONIES. I AM an Englishman, born and bred; and yet I By the long wash of Australasian seas I can quote, you see. I know English writers better I had not, it is true, much taste for reading as a boy; I liked riding better; I loved poaching (with a blunderbuss stolen from the butler's pantry) best of all. When my father died, and my brother Tom was left sole heir, I daresay I did not do much credit to his grand establishment. He did not put any insuperable barriers to my fancy for emigration. We parted not as brothers, I fear, nor even as friends. He was very solicitous that the Family name should not be discredited by association with any low pursuit-such as sheep-farming (the Trevors, he said, had not been connected with trade for centuries); and I indulged him in this matter with a vengeance. Nobody would suspect that in the person of Mr John Stokes, last of Melbourne, late of Morumbidgee, is now concentrated all that remains of the rich blood of the Trevors of Trevarton. In Australia, one kind of blood is no better than another for we don't refine our own sugar. However, there is no need for bitterness. Tom is dead now, poor fellow, childless; and his wife is dead, and her nephew is made heir of all. The breezy uplands, where I used to fly my kite, are his; the Home Farm, where I was wont to skim the cream from the standing milk; the sheltered paddock that once held the long-tailed pony which my father gave me upon the last birthday I ever spent in England. The old man never dreamed that things would turn out thus. Trevarton gone to strangers-Heaven knows whom; I don't. And likely to change hands again, for the young spark, 'tis said, is lavish of his money. I might buy the estate to-morrow, doubtless, if I chose; but I do not choose. Mr John Stokes is not ambitious of territorial distinction. What are three or four hundred paltry acres, to one who has had twenty square miles of pastureland in the underworld to call his own! No. I can be no country squire now. I am a citizen of the universe without a tie; and also, alas! without a friend within sixteen thousand miles or so. England, Cricket was a favourite game with village boys, but was only in rare instances played by men. There was one cricket-club where there are now a dozen. If you looked out the word in the encyclopædias of that date, it would have been with this result: 'CRICKET. See Gryllus; is also [small type] an exercise or game with bats and a ball.' Yet one Australian firm alone gave seven thousand pounds this year for the honour of a visit from the Eleven of England. Each man received his L150, had his passage paid out and home, and was maintained throughout his stay in the colony as though he were a prince of the blood. He never went out upon wheels without four horses. His excellency the governor presided at the entertainment which welcomed these Philosophers of the Wicket, who were received everywhere with distinctions such as were never paid to Their departure from England those of the Porch. was so timed as not to interfere with their professional avocations (!), and they now return for the recommencement of the cricketing season at home. Thus, with the exception of the time lost in the two voyages, they will have played cricket all the year round, and been well rewarded for it. In my time, there was scarcely a professional cricketer in Great Britain. Roundhand bowling was almost unknown. It was contemptuously called throwing' by the veterans, who accounted for its origin thus: An only son, much addicted to cricket, sighed in vain for his favourite pursuit during the holidays, until his sisters volunteered to bowl for him. Cricket in the family became from that date an established institution; only, as the girls were unable to bowl in the usual way (that is, underhand), because of their petticoats (which they could not well gather up under their left arms as a man does his coat-tails), they bowled round hand; and that, after a little, so accurately, that their brother was quite enamoured of the fashion, and took it back with him to school. This feminine bowling-but with the speed of a catapult, and the certainty of a rifle bullet-is now become the recognised mode. What a stride, then, has this one matter of Cricket made, which I left an amusement, to find a recognised Art, nay, a Science, the disciples of which are invited even to the antipodes ! This is merely a single instance of that stupendous Change which has affected all things here within a quarter of a century. As a father who has been away from his child in foreign climes returns, and scarcely recognises his own, so gaze I on England. She is beautiful exceedingly, thinks he, but with another sort of beauty than that which has recurred to him in danger, in sickness, in the long watches of the night, at all times, in short, when the sombre thought has intruded that he will see her never more; different altogether from that picture which he has made within his mind, and dwelt upon throughout that weary voyage which ended at fast in home: she is a child no longer, but a woman grown, with all her charms mature. My own advancing years must plead excuse for a metaphor so faulty as this. I am not old, as years go, but I feel old in this England, which I left a youth, and return to in middle age. The generation to which I once belonged, here, has grown up without me, among experiences of which I know nothing. I look for companions (so strongly do old associations work) into the faces of men who have been born since I left my native land. I am told that the very external face of nature has suffered change here that what were pleasant fields, are seamed with roads of iron, and strewed with ashes; the common lands enclosed; the trees uprooted, and their places filled with towering chimneys, breathing the black breath of trade. I do not care to see if this be true. I said that I was Stokes, and Australasian to the backbone, but it is a foolish prejudice, but I trust they have When I left not found coal in Trevarton parish, and sunk a round I am here in England to behold the wonders of civilisation, and life in the metropolis of the world; my object so far is identical with that of the Japanese ambassadors. But many things are so altered since my time that they are more strange than if they were new. Let me take a simple example. black pit in the middle of the paddock. That western country has not, I understand, been found so wealthy underground as other districts, but merely produces the fruits of the earth after the old fashion still. I am glad of it. I have been in a land which, being wounded by the pick, bleeds gold, but its people are no better for that; gold, we know, makes guilt. Even in the English West, however, where I landed, there was much unrecognisable. We flew by towns which were hamlets when I left them, and by roaring factories which were the silent pasture-lands of cattle here and there, where space was still to be found, there were set up rifle-butts the strangest sight of all. The very mode of travel was a wonder to me. The last time I had gone that route (to school), it was a three days' journey, which was now a six hours' trip. The inns are in ruins, and the landlords broken or dead all along that road. The coachmen and postboys are genera as entirely extinct as the dodo of my adopted land. Through Evarton, which was on the Great South Road, there were wont to pass to and fro two hundred coaches per diem, but a single omnibus from Evarton Road Station suffices to carry all that visit that now secluded village. I saw the thing standing at the Navvy's Arms myself as the train made a moment's stoppage, whereat the fiery monster, who had dragged us through the air at forty miles an hour, shrieked impatiently for Work, more work,' as the Foul Fiend shrieked to the sorcerer. To men who go sixty miles to their city counting-houses every morning, and return in the afternoon to their families at the sea-side, these matters may appear commonplace enough. The fairy tales of science and the long results of time' awaken in them no such interest; their lives are centred (ah me!) in wife and children, in friends and home. They have neither leisure nor inclination for such reflections as crowd in upon me with every sight I see in this old land which is so new to me. They gaze out of the carriage window at the flying landscape almost without consciousness of those bare white poles that fly too all the way, bearing their half-a-dozen lines of wire. They might be clothes-props for all the notice they excite. But to me, who have lived apart from my fellow-men so long, often with no means of communicating with them save by a perilous day's ride through a wilderness, this power of speech at a distance seems very won derful and precious. Ah, what would I not have given at times for one little tinkle such as the telegraph bell gives, or one little 'tick, tick' of its watch-like hands, to let me know that another human being was wishing me well! The sound of a voice, the touch of a hand, the writing of a letter, are now no longer necessary to transmit human sympathy; and as the world rolls, and knowledge broadens, I do not doubt that there will be one day scarce a single spot in the whole world whither a healing word may not fly from Old England more swiftly by a hundred times than on the wings of a dove. There will be no such thing as Exile then. You who have always lived at home, do not know how the mere sight of a ship lying in an Australian harbour bound for the English shore moves the hearts of rough stern men who are not to sail in her; I have seen them touch her sides with a sort of reverence. If you do not believe this, you will scarcely be to blame; for how is it possible you should understand home-sickness-the yearning of the emigrant: a certain poetry, my friends, which you imagine, perhaps, to exist in the book-world only, flames up, I tell you, like the crocus, in every exiled bosom, no matter how frozen the soil. If a ship, then, which in half-a-year's time, perhaps, will reach our native shore, excites such interest, judge what it will be to see, to touch such wires as these, and to know that the other end of them lies in England. Even if no friend be there to flash his love to us across the world, this will be something. It would have been a great deal to me, I know, who had no such friend. * I write all this because I spoke of it to one who was my fellow-passenger in the train, and it seemed to have some interest for him. He was civil enough to me, being amused (I could see) with my notice of things as with the remarks of a child. We colonists, in the eyes of you denizens of the old country, must always, I suppose, appear thus. Yet here let me be allowed to say, that, while leaving us far behind in very much, you have dropped some things in your swift career which we have retained. The power of genial appreciation has gone from you almost utterly; you seem afraid of committing yourselves too far-in everything save censure. The virtues of hospitality are not held at their due value; you entertain, in order that you may be entertained again, and that with ostentation and effort. The ancient fashion of asking a friend to stop to dinner,' has quite faded away. A glazed and lithographed invitation is sent to him a fortnight in advance, instead, and a much more splendid banquet is provided for him than the pot-luck' to which he would otherwise have been welcomed. By this apparently extravagant procedure, half-a-dozen ordinary entertainments are saved, for the 'friend' is thereby crossed out of the invitation list for the next four months-paid off like a tailor's bill, until he accumulates sufficiently to be settled again. I do not say English men and women are become hollow-hearted-Heaven forbid! but there is a love of tawdry glitter and show among them which I do not think used to be of old, and such as I have not seen in the underworld save in the case of its aboriginal inhabitants, who are as passionately fond of the greenest beads as though they were genuine emeralds. Wealth and Fashion have here got honest Nature by the throat, and are garrotting her. How you must all have grinned when you heard of your fellow-countrymen on the other side of the globe assembling by tens of thousands to welcome the advent of a Primrose from Old England! In one of dear Hans Christian Andersen's tales, a certain prince sends to his love, the emperor's daughter, a rose, the fragrance of which is so exquisite, that everybody forgets his sorrows when he smells it; and a nightingale who sings as though all the lovely melodies of the world were collected in her little throat. When she saw the silver shrines containing these presents, the princess clapped her hands for joy. Then out came the rose-tree with the beautiful rose. "How very elegantly it is made!" exclaimed all the court ladies. "It is more than elegant," said the emperor-" it is charming." 66 'But the princess, having felt it, was ready to cry. "Fie, papa," said she; it is not an artificial rose, but merely a natural one." "Fie!" echoed all the ladies-in-waiting, "it is merely a natural rose." "Let's see what the other shrine may contain before we fly into a passion," said his majesty; and then out came the nightingale, and sang so sweetly, that nobody at first thought of any spiteful fault-finding. Superbe!-charmant!" cried the court ladies, for they all chattered French, however badly. The bird reminds me of the late empress's musical box," observed an old lord-in-waiting; "it has the same tone and the same execution." Yes," said the emperor, crying like a little child. "But it is not a real bird, I trust?" asked the but as for you, my friends, it is my opinion that you would prefer a flower out of a jeweller's shop to the most charming that the Giver of all Good ever set in the world, to breathe not only its natural sweetness, but to awaken memories and thoughts too deep, indeed, for tears. Some of these sentiments, which I had only gathered at that time from the books which photograph you (and which we read, as I have said, with such excessive interest beyond the sea), I ventured to express to my fellow-traveller, who laughed at them goodnaturedly, as one laughs at the petulance of a child. I had been away from society so long, he said, that I was not in a position to understand these matters; I was not looking at them from the right point of sight. He seemed to think one should stand inside in order to obtain a complete and comprehensive view of the Social Edifice. However, we parted excellent friends at the Terminus. As the train glided in under the mighty roof, I bethought me of that contracted shell set in the midst of fields which in my time was Paddington station. The line, I think, reached as far as Hanwell, which now casts its iron net over a score of counties. 'You should see Frith's picture of the Railway Station,' were the last words of my carriage acquaintance in answer to some remark upon this subject, as he hurried away with a bow. In Melbourne -had he arrived there as I had in England-I should have taken him, bag and baggage, home, and insisted upon his staying there till he got tired of me. In London, however, a Londoner's first object is not to have a spare room in his house, in order to be able with a good conscience to send his own mother to a hotel.* I directed the cabman to drive me to the same inn at which I rested the night before I left England. I remembered it well: its limp waiters, its stiff and high-voiced lady at the bar; its coffee-room furnished with pens as for a sheep-fair, and smelling of cruets. 'Hollo, my good friend!' cried I, as the cabman pulled up in front of an edifice five times the size of His Excellency the governor's house, where have you driven me to? I am not expected, I regret to say, at Buckingham Palace.' "This is your 'Otel, sir, nevertheless. I thank your honour kindly. You are one of the right sort, you are. I wish sixpences was as scarce as gentlemen, I do.' Not understanding the new tariff, I had paid him at the old shilling rate, and hence this epigrammatic burst of gratitude. The place wherein I now found myself was indeed a stately caravansary. Hot and cold baths, bran baths (the very intention of which is unknown to me), shower baths, douche baths, all marble and magnificence, were now where formerly there was but one miserable wooden trough overlooked by the pantry window. "The establishment,' I was informed by a very pearl of head-waiters, looking more ducal than any confidential servant of a duke,' was also in communication with some Turkish Baths within a few minutes' walk.' I wallowed in the crystal waters of an alabaster pool for a while, and then, as lively as an opossum, descended into the coffee-room. Coffeeroom! It was more like a drawing-room, with a hundred waiters, and a thousand guests, and at least a score or so of Mr John Stokeses the mirrors multiplied everything to such an extent. 'Waiter,' said I,' what is that enormous instrument which I perceive through yonder window, with the wooden box beside it?' The waiter saw nothing remarkable. 'What, man? Do you not perceive that ship's ventilator, which has apparently married a ladder.' "That is only the hotel fire-escape, sir.' * It is not Hospitality but Terror through which entertainment and lodging are obtained from him by his mother-in-law. Only that! The last time I was there, it was the boast of the place that its staircases up to the first floor were made of stone, so that all eminent persons, at least-all the people who were most worth saving— who should honour it with their patronage, were safe from the devouring element. 'And what time will you dine, sir?' 'What time do people dine in London?' asked I. 'O sir, gentlemen dine at all hours, at all hours, sir-after seven.' Now, my hour for dining in the bush, when that event came off at all, used to be 11.30 A. M. THE TWO SCYTHES. I HAD two scythes, with faces full of light. So bright and stainless was each keen-edged blade, ; I hung above his grave one blade of steel; And as I hastened to the half-cut mead, I thought how well each scythe a great truth shews, Whose powers rust, whose beauties quickly fade, CHARLES EDE The Editors of Chambers's Journal have to request that all communications be addressed to 47 Paternoster Row, London, and that they further be accompanied by postagestamps, as the return of rejected Contributions cannot otherwise be guaranteed. Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by all Booksellers. I PET BIRDS AND BIRD-KEEPING. IN beginning to write a few pages about birds, I am met by this puzzle-among the peacocks and robinredbreasts, ducks and Java sparrows, tiny waxbills and big dorkings, bullfinches and learned jackdaws, impudent tomtits and destructive crossbills, where am I to begin? 6 Shall I begin by writing of my naughty robin, who will be let out at breakfast-time, and hopping upon my plate, removes my butter to a remote locality, there to conceal it from human ken? Or shall I give the history of Miss Hamburgh,' who, having been a weakly chick, unable so much as to get out of her own shell, was carefully nursed, a little squeaking wretch, for at least a week in flannel, attired afterwards in a brand-new pinafore-a piece of thick white blotting-paper, with a hole for the head cut in it-and fed like a lady upon melted jelly till she picked up her strength! That was coddling truly; and many a remonstrance did I offer to Miss Hamburgh's foster-nurse. The poor little chick, however, is now a grown-up hen, at least eight months old; and each day after laying she comes into the house, tapping authoritatively at the kitchen window, to state what she has done, and to ask for a piece of bread. Then there is little Dicky Goldfinch, who drags up perseveringly the water from his well, pulling up the chain with his small bill, so hard, and setting so determinedly his little foot upon it till the water is raised, and Master Dicky has drunk to his satisfaction. He looks so important while performing his little task, and always waits to hear the bucket drop again, generally peeping down after it, to see that it is all right; but I own I don't like to allow too much of it, and he is never suffered to be left at all without a proper goblet of water in his cage. Of all birds I know for sociable, pleasant ways, none are superior to these pet goldfinches; their huffs and furious fits of jealousyalmost as bad as those of robins-are so amusing. Of one of my own goldfinches, indeed, I really feel quite a wholesome dread. If his feelings are hurt, he acts so steadily an 'injured' part, that one must perforce be penitent. He sits with.his back to me, and refuses hemp-seeds; and when it comes to that, I cannot but feel unhappy. I fear, indeed, that a great many people prey on their friends' kind feeling with no better right than Goldie, and a far less amount of PRICE 14d. talent; for what in a bird is clever, hardly assumes the same character when a rational being is the actor of the scene. The rules for bird-keeping are very few. 'Let well alone,' is perhaps the first and greatest; the virtue of cleanliness, and the advantage of temperance, come second and third in order; and for the fourth rule we may take the enjoyment of as much fresh air and exercise as is practicable. My own birds are in general a healthy set of creatures. The largest number certainly live in a room or aviary; but I have also many in small cages, of which those which I prefer are made of plain stained deal, and fitted with tin-wire. A narrow sort of skirting-board surrounds the cage, and prevents the seed and sand from being spilled about, which in open cages very often happens. And here I beg to hint, that a good many of those young gentlemen who spend days in making chips,' to the disgust of housemaids, might very well turn some of their superfluous energies to doing real neatly finished work, and turning out such cages as would be actual palaces to poor little birds shut up, perhaps, in a cage about six inches square. When people live in the country, half the birds' provisions may be also gathered and stored up by their young masters and mistresses during summer and autumn days. What great sheafs of plantainall nice, and brown, and ripe-they may then bring in, and spread on the floor to dry! What quantities of rape-seed, growing amongst the wheat, they may stow away in great bags for use! And what stores of thistle-seed, what heaps of groundsel, what basketfuls of chickweed and of watercress they may go out and forage for in the morning. Morning walks are so pleasant, they hardly want any object; still, they are all the nicer for knowing that some brown and yellow wings will be all flapping and shaking, and a small sweet voice talking as fast as it can go, the instant that Master Dicky sees us coming in. In morning walks, besides, we see the wild birds' ways; hear all their pretty voices, as one by one they join the concert in the grove; see all their lively movements, as they shake and prune their many-coloured dresses, and fly off home again, with perhaps a long straw dangling for half a yard behind them, or with a tuft of moss, or with a feather, for which it often happens there will be a fight. This is about the season when birds' nests are about, and I do hope that people who like to look at them will other birds, who can sometimes manage to stand up to a considerable height. try not to frighten the poor mother-birds. Fancy a little creature frightened almost to death, and yet staying close by her nestlings. In a castle in the I have had the pleasure of presiding over the north, where a friend of mine was staying the summer manufacture of a good many bird-cages, and though I before last, there was in the library a great stuffed must leave the nailing and the gluing, and the saweagle, with its wings spread out the most dreadfuling and the planing, to the talents of the young gentlemen who therein delight, I may perhaps object, as you may well suppose, for mere cocks and venture to give them a few architectural hints. For hens. There was, also, an obnoxious live turkey-cock, one bullfinch or chaffinch, or a pair of canaries or who was always gobbling and strutting, and making goldfinches, a cage about eighteen inches square such a show of bravery and of his own dignity, as to would be quite a palace. For such a cage, it is a good make every one long to take down his pride a little. So thing to allow from four to six inches of wood-work one day, when all the fowls were assembled, the turkey- all round the bottom, but this is not absolutely neces sary. The board for the floor being eighteen inches cock making his usual fuss, and the poor little hens each way, the sides should be made of wire fitted into all frightened at such a crusty gentleman, all of a a frame, or let into the floor and into 'corner-posts' sudden the aforesaid eagle was brought out amongst As long as there are brad-awls, I daresay my hint them, hovering in the midst of them with wings out- may be useless; but a very feasible, though not overspread, as if swooping upon his prey! Away went workman-like arrangement, is to bore the holes with ducks and geese-away went the turkey-cock without a red-hot iron wire, or with a steel knitting-pin, and an attempt at gobble-away went every one who had for the door-wires this is at all events a good plan. wings to fly! Only a poor little helpless group of The wires themselves I would always have closely placed, for young nestlings are so slim, that they newly hatched chickens stayed, because they were so are liable to slip out, while larger birds are apt to frightened that they could not run; and there was stick their heads between them. Close wiring is their mother, a poor delicate white hen, who alone of therefore by far the best economy. Cage-makers all the poultry-yard dared to attack the enemy. must be careful not to leave bits of wire sticking up, With her feathers ruffling and her wings all spread, or little crevices in which the birds' feet can catch. clucking and scolding, and keeping the chicks behind This is one of the greatest miseries belonging to small her, this little fearless creature went on to dare the cages-the space being so small, the birds hang on the wires often, and catching their feet in them, get a eagle! great deal hurt. For this reason, the cages that are made of wicker answer better. Before we begin to keep birds, we ought to provide a home for them to live in; and as so very much of a bird's health, as well as of its happiness, depends on this being done wisely, and with some knowledge of birds' tastes, I propose to give a few hints upon the subject. One very great object in the construction of any bird-cage should be abundant light and air. I think it is much better to have a mere curtain or cover to hang on one side--as well as being drawn all over for warmth at night-than to have a quantity of opaque wooden walls shutting out the air. Very hot sunshine, or strong drafts, are not frequent, and even from these a curtain might be enough protection, while in the winter-days the little pets would have all the light they could have. A slide of glass run outside the wire is then a first-rate The cottage cage, as it is called, on account of its house-like shape, is perhaps the best, as it certainly is the most popular. This cage has a low skirtingboard all round, and four sides of wire bending over a little at the top. The seed and water tins do best slipped in as a drawer, of which one end holds water, and the other seed; and instead of the usual plan of wiring over the place where the drawer runs in, so as to keep out the birds, it answers well to have a narrow pent-house of zinc or wood, through the holes in which the birds can eat and drink. I once lost a tomtit in a largish aviary cage; and after we had hunted all about the house, tom was discovered squatting comfortably in the seed-box, and eating away most tranquilly. Poor little tom, I fear, had found some slight difficulty in reaching his seed before, his legs being a good deal shorter than those of the For seed-holders, small boxes with holes in the lid do well; and for water, considering the numbers of birds that suffer so terribly through not being able to get at a drinking-glass, which perhaps has been turned a little to one side, I would recommend bird-keepers to use a common red saucer belonging to a flower-pot standing upon the cage-floor. These pans clean thoroughly, and the birds are fond of perching on their edges. I have sometimes, in rather smaller cages, used glasses such as those that are in ink-stands. Their advantage lies in exposing but little opening to admit any dirt or splashing, while the birds can always readily put their heads in. tone of voice in which one of my birds was speaking. One day I was quite frightened by the unnatural It came to the side of its cage, and called and looked out, and did all it could to attract attention. The poor little thing, it seemed, had been alone some time, and the neck of the water-glass being outside the cage, and not fitting quite exactly, the water had could not get a drop. It could hardly cry, its throat been a very little spilt, and the poor little creature had got so very dry and hoarse; and that was the last time I ever let a bird of mine run the risks of an outside water-glass. When a cage is made on purpose, plain stained deal is, I think, the very best wood to use; it may be varnished, but must not be painted, any more than the wire. Brass wire should never come near a cage at all. for instance, and two others rounded; the birds have I like the perches of two different sizes, one square, then a choice where they will perch and roost. Deal perches or smooth soft woods are best, and the birds are always sure to roost on the highest, and to be much aggrieved if there is none very high for them to resort to regularly. Please to observe that the cage-birds I speak of are all home-bred; I can never advocate catching a wild bird, for I do not think that such can ever be really happy without the sense of freedom; while I hope I myself can never feel pleasure in acting jailer! The way I like to have birds best, is when the wild birds consent to live amongst us tamely, on an understanding of mutual advantages, food and protection on |