with an assurance as surprising as unexpected. The following anecdote will prove the enduring attachment of which this creature is capable. The late Colonel Johnson, says a recent writer, was ordered to Canada with his battalion, and being very fond of falconry, to which he had devoted much time and expense, he took with him two of his favorite peregrines, as his companions across the Atlantic. It was his constant habit during the voyage to allow them to fly every day, after "feeding them up," that they might not be induced to rake off after a passing sea-gull, or wander out of sight of the vessel. Sometimes their rambles were very wide and protracted; at others they would ascend to such a height as to be almost lost to the view of the passengers, who soon found them to be an effectual means of relieving the tedium of a long sea-voyage, and naturally took a lively interest in their welfare; but, as they were in the habit of returning regularly to the ship, no uneasiness was felt during their occasional absence. At last, one evening, after a longer flight than

with their young.

There are several instances on record of children having fallen victims to the ferocity of this bird. In 1737, in Norway, a child two years of age was running from the house to his parents, who were working in the fields, when an eagle pounced upon him, and, in spite of the agonized screams of his parents, he was dragged away to the aerie of the eagle. Ray informs us that in one of the Orkneys a child twelve months old was seized and carried four miles to its nest; but the mother, inspired with courage by the occasion, followed the robber, clambered the mountain, and reseued the babe from the nest unhurt.

The courage, power, docility, and swiftness of the peregrine falcon rendered it a favorite in the days of falconry. The game at which it was flown were herons, cranes, wild ducks, &c., which it took by soaring above, and then, making its swoop, that is, darting down impetuously upon them, bore them with irresistible violence to the earth. The appearance of this hawk excites universal panic among the water-fowl. A notorious characteristic of the species is, that at the report of a gun it will sometimes come and carry off, from within thirty yards of the sportsman, a bird which he may have just shot,

ing. Day after day passed away, and, however much he may have continued to regret his loss, Captain Johnson had at length made up his mind that it was irretrievable, and that he should never see him again. Soon after the arrival of the regiment in America, on casting his eyes over a Halifax newspaper, he was struck by a paragraph announcing that the captain of an American schooner had at that moment in his possession a fine hawk, which had suddenly made its appearance on board his ship during his passage from Liverpool. The idea at once occurred to Captain Johnson that this could be no other than his much-prized falcon; so, having obtained immediate leave of absence, he set out for Halifax, a journey of some days. On arrival, he lost no time in waiting on the commander of the schooner, announcing the object of his journey, and requesting that he might be allowed to see the bird: but the American had no idea of relinquishing his prize so easily, and stoutly refused to admit of the interview, "guessing" that it was very easy for an Englishman to lay claim to another man's property, but" calculating" that it was a great deal harder for him to get possession of it; and concluded by asserting in unqualified terms his entire

disbelief in the whole story. Captain Johnson, whose object, however, was rather to recover his falcon than to pick a quarrel with the American, proposed that his claim to the ownership of the bird should be decided by an experiment, which several Americans who were present admitted to be perfectly reasonable, and in which their countryman was at last persuaded to acquiesce. It was this:-Captain Johnson was to be admitted to an interview with the hawkwho, by the way, had as yet shown no partiality for any person since her arrival in the New World, but, on the contrary, had rather repelled all attempts at familiarityand if at this meeting she should not only exhibit such unequivocal signs of attachment and recognition as should induce the majority of the bystanders to believe that he really was her original master, but, especially, if she should play with the buttons of his coat, then the American was at once to waive all claim to her. The trial was immediately made. The American went up-stairs, and shortly returned

THE PEREGRINE FALCON.

with the falcon; but the door was hardly opened before she darted from his fist and perched at once on the shoulder of her beloved and long-lost protector, evincing by every means in her power her delight and affection, rubbing her head against his cheek, and taking hold of the buttons of his coat and champing them playfully between her mandibles one after another. This was enough. The jury were unanimous. A verdict for the plaintiff was pronounced.

LIFE.

YHANGE is the constant feature of so

CHA

ciety. The world is like a magic-lantern, or the shifting scenes of a pantomime. Ten years convert the population of schools into men and women, the young into fathers and matrons, make and mar fortunes, and bury the last generation but one. Twenty years convert infants into lovers and fathers and mothers, render youth the operative generations, decide men's fortunes and distinctions, convert active men into crawling drivelers, and bury all preceding generations. Thirty years raise an active generation from nonentity, change fascinating beauties into bearable old women, convert lovers into grandfathers, and bury the active generation, or reduce them to decrepitude and imbecility. Forty years, alas! change the face of all society. Infants are growing old, the bloom of youth and beauty has passed away, two active generations have been swept from the stage of life, names so cherished are forgotten, and unsuspected candidates for fame have started from the exhaustless womb of nature. Fifty years-why should any desire to retain affections from maturity for fifty years? It is to behold a world of which you know nothing, and to which you are unknown It is to weep for the generations long since passed-for lovers, for parents, for children, for friends in the grave. It is to see everything turned upside-down by the fickle hand of fortune and the absolute despotism of time. It is, in a word, to behold the vanity of life in all the vanities of display.

A WATER DRINKER. - Cobbett thus describes his own experience :-"In the midst of a society where wine or spirits are considered as of little more value than water, I have lived two years without either; and with no other drink but water, except when I have found it convenient to obtain milk: not an hour's illness; not a headache for an hour; not the smallest ailment; not a restless night; not a drowsy morning, have I known during these two famous years of my life. The sun never rises before me; I have always to wait for him to come and give me light to write by, while my mind is in full vigor, and while nothing has come to cloud its clearness."

hackway: Pans Stotch took ADAR

MADAME GEORGE SAND:

HER BOOKS AND HER RELIGION.

the immortal Görres and the German mystics have had their day, there is the immortal Göthe, and the Pantheists; and I incline to think that the fashion has set very strongly in their favor. Voltaire and the Encyclopædians are voted, now, barbares, and there is no term of reprobation strong enough for heartless Humes and Helvetiuses, who lived but to destroy, and who only thought to doubt. Wretched as Voltaire's sneers and puns are, I think there is something more manly and' earnest even in them than in the present muddy French transcendentalism. Pantheism is the word now; one and all have begun to éprouver the besoin of a religious sentiment; and we are deluged with a host of gods accordingly. Monsieur de Balzac feels himself to be inspired; Victor Hugo is a god; Madame Sand is a god; that tawdry man of genius, Jules Janin, who writes theatrical reviews for the "Debats," has divine intimations; and there is scarcely a beggarly, beardless scribbler of poems and prose, but tells you, in his preface, of the sainteté of the sacerdoce littéraire; or a dirty student, sucking tobacco and beer, and reeling home with a grisette from the chaumière, who is not convinced of the necessity of a new "Messianism," and will hickup, to such as will listen, chapters of his own drunken Apocalypse. Surely, the negatives of the olden days were far less dangerous than the assertions of the present; and you may fancy what a religion that must be which has such high-priests.

There is no reason to trouble the reader with details of the lives of many of these prophets and expounders of new revelations. Madame Sand, for instance, I do not know personally, and can only speak of her from report. True or false, the history, at any rate, is not very edifying, and so may be passed over, but, as a certain great philosopher told us, in very humble and simple words, that we are not to expect to gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, we may at least demand, in all persons assuming the character of moralist or philosopher, order, soberness, and regularity of life; for we are apt to distrust the intellect that we fancy can be swayed by circumstance or passion; and we know how circumVOL. II, No. 3.-R

stance and passion will sway the intellect; how mortified vanity will form excuses for itself; and how temper turns angrily upon conscience, that reproves it. How often have we called our judge our enemy, because he has given sentence against us! How often have we called the right wrong, because the right condemns us! And in the lives of many of the bitter foes of the Christian doctrine can we find no personal reason for their hostility? The men of Athens said it was out of regard for religion that they murdered Socrates; but we have had time since then to reconsider the verdict; and Socrates's character is pretty pure now, in spite of the sentence and the jury of those days.

The Parisian philosophers will attempt to explain to you the changes through which Madame Sand's mind has passed,— the initiatory trials, labors, and sufferings which she had to go through,—before she reached her present happy state of mental illumination. She teaches her wisdom in parables, that are, mostly, a couple of volumes long; and began, first, by an eloquent attack on marriage, in the charming novel of "Indiana." "Pity," cried she, "for the poor woman who, united to a being whose brute-force makes him her superior, should venture to break the bondage which is imposed on her, and allow her heart to be free."

In support of this claim of pity, she writes two volumes of the most exquisite prose.

What a tender, suffering creature is Indiana; how little her husband appreciates that gentleness which he is crushing by his tyranny and bitter scorn; how natural it is that, in the absence of his sympathy, she-poor, olinging, confiding creature-should seek elsewhere for shelter; how cautious should we be to call criminal-to visit with too heavy a censure—an act which is one of the natural impulses of a tender heart, that seeks but for a worthy object of love. But why attempt to tell the tale of beautiful Indiana? Madame Sand has written it so well that not the hardest-hearted husband in Christendom can fail to be touched by her sorrows, though he may refuse to listen to her argument. Let us grant, for argument's sake, that the laws of marriage, especially the French laws of marriage, press very cruelly upon unfortunate wo

men.

But if one wants to have a question of

this, or any nature, honestly argued, it is better, surely, to apply to an indifferent person for an umpire. For instance, the stealing of pocket-handkerchiefs or snuffboxes may, or may not, be vicious; but if we, who have not the wit, or will not take the trouble to decide the question ourselves, want to hear the real rights of the matter, we should not, surely, apply to a pickpocket to know what he thought on the point. It might naturally be presumed that he would be rather a prejudiced person-particularly as his reasoning, if successful, might get him out of jail. This is a homely illustration, no doubt; all we would urge by it, is, that Madame Sand having, according to the French newspapers, had a stern husband, and also having, according to the newspapers, sought "sympathy" elsewhere, her arguments may be considered to be somewhat partial, and received with some little caution.

And tell us, Who have been the social reformers ?-the haters, that is, of the present system according to which we live, love, marry, have children, educate them, and endow them-are they pure themselves? I do believe not one; and directly a man begins to quarrel with the world and its ways, and to lift up, as he calls it, the voice of his despair, and preach passionately to mankind about this tyranny of faith, customs, laws, if we examine what the personal character of the preacher is, we begin pretty clearly to understand the value of the doctrine. Any one can see why Rousseau should be such a whimpering reformer, and Byron such a free-and-easy misanthropist; and why our accomplished Madame Sand, who has a genius and eloquence inferior to neither, should take the present condition of mankind (French-kind) so much to heart, and labor so hotly to set it right.

After "Indiana" (which, we presume, contains the lady's notions upon wives and husbands) came Valentine," which may be said to exhibit her doctrine in regard to young men and maidens, to whom the author would accord, as we fancy, the same tender license. "Valentine" was followed by "Lelia," a wonderful book indeed, gorgeous in eloquence, and rich in magnificent poetry; a regular topsyturvyfication of morality, a thieves' and prostitutes' apotheosis. This book has received some enlargements and emendations by the

writer; it contains her notions on morals, and, as we have said, are so peculiar, that, alas! they can only be mentioned here, not particularized: but of "Spiridion" we may write a few pages, as it is her religious manifesto.

In this work the lady asserts her pantheistical doctrine, and openly attacks the received Christian creed. She declares it to be useless now, and unfitted to the exigencies and the degree of culture of the actual world; and, though it would be hardly worth while to combat her opinions in due form, it is, at least, worth while to notice them, not merely from the extraordinary eloquence and genius of the woman herself, but because they express the opinions of a great number of people besides: for she not only produces her own thoughts, but imitates those of others very eagerly; and one finds, in her writings, so much similarity with others, or, in others, so much resemblance to her-that the book before us may pass for the expression of the sentiments of a certain French party.

"Dieu est mort," [God is dead,] says another writer of the same class, and of great genius too. "Dieu est mort," writes Mr. Henry Heine, speaking of the Christian God; and he adds, in a daring figure of speech,-" N'entendez vous pas sonner la Clochette?-on porte les sacremens à un Dieu qui se meurt!" [Hear you not the clock? They bear the sacraments to a God who dies.] Another of the pantheist poetical philosophers, Mr. Edgar Quinet, has a poem in which Christ and the Virgin Mary are made to die similarly, and the former is classed with Prometheus. This book of "Spiridion" is a continuation of the theme, and, perhaps, you will listen to some of the author's expositions of it.

It must be confessed that the controversialists of the present day have an eminent advantage over their predecessors in the days of folios: it required some learning then to write a book, and some time, at least; for the very labor of writing out a thousand such vast pages would demand a considerable period. But now, in the age of duodecimos, the system is reformed altogether: a male or female controversialist draws upon his imagination, and not his learning; makes a story instead of an argument; and, in the course of one hundred and fifty pages, (where the preacher has it all his own way,) will prove or disprove you anything. In like

manner, by means of pretty sentimental tales, and cheap apologues, Mrs. Sand proclaims her truth-that we need a new Messiah, and that the Christian religion is no more! O awful, awful name of God! Light unbearable! Mystery unfathomable! Vastness immeasurable! Who are those who come forward to explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking into the depths of the light, and measure the immeasurable vastness to a hair? O name, that God's people of old did fear to utter! O light, that God's prophet would have perished had he seen! Who are these that are now so familiar with it? Women, truly, for the most part, weak women-weak in intellect, weak, mayhap, in spelling and grammar, but marvelously strong in faith. Women, who step down to the people with stately step and voice of authority, and deliver their twopenny tablets, as if there were some divine authority for the wretched nonsense recorded there!

With regard to the spelling and grammar, our Parisian Pythoness stands, in goodly fellowship, remarkable. Her style is a noble, and, as far as a foreigner can judge a strange tongue, beautifully rich and pure. She has a very exuberant imagination, and with it a very chaste style of expression. She never scarcely indulges in declamation, as other modern prophets do, and yet her sentences are exquisitely melodious and full. She seldom runs a thought to death, (after the manner of some prophets, who, when they catch a little one, toy with it until they kill it,) but she leaves you at the end of one of her brief, rich, melancholy sentences, with plenty of food for future cogitation. I can't express to you the charm of them; they seem to be like the sound of country bells-provoking I don't know what vein of musing and meditation, and falling sweetly and sadly on the ear. "This wonderful power of language must have been felt by most people who read Madame Sand's first books, "Valentine" and "Indiana" in "Spiridion" it is greater, I think, than ever and for those who are not afraid of the matter of the novel, the manner will be found most delightful. The author's intention, I presume, is to describe, in a parable, her notions of the downfall of the Catholic Church; and, indeed, of the whole Christian scheme.

A friend of mine, who has just come from Italy, says that he has left there Messrs. Spr Pl and W. Dr————d, who were the lights of the great Church in Newman-street, who were themselves apostles, and declared and believed that every word of nonsense which fell from their lips was a direct spiritual intervention. These gentlemen have become Puseyites already, and are, my friend states, in the high-way to Catholicism. Madame Sand herself was a Catholic some time since: having been converted to that faith along with M. N-, of the Academy of Music, Mr. L- the piano-forte player,

and one or two other chosen individuals, by the famous Abbé de la M. Abbé de la M- (so told me, in the diligence, by a priest, who read his breviary and gossiped alternately very curiously and pleasantly) is himself an ame perdue: the man spoke of his brother clergyman with actual horror; and it certainly appears that the Abbé's works of conversion have not prospered; for Madame Sand having brought her hero (and herself, as we may presume) to the point of Catholicism, proceeds directly to dispose of that as she has done of Judaism and Protestantism, and will not leave, of the whole fabric of Christianity, a single stone standing.

For

I think the fate of our English Newmanstreet apostles, and M. de la M- -, the mad priest, and his congregation of mad converts, should be a warning to such of us as are inclined to dabble in religious speculations; for, in them, as in all others, our flighty brains soon lose themselves, and we find our reason speedily lying prostrate at the mercy of our passions; and I think that Madame Sand's novel of Spiridion may do a vast deal of good, and bears a good moral with it; though not such an one, perhaps, as our fair philosopher intended. anything he learned, Samuel-Peter-Spiridion-Hebronius might have remained a Jew from the beginning to the end. Wherefore be in such a hurry to set up new faiths? Wherefore, Madame Sand, try and be so preternaturally wise? Wherefore be so eager to jump out of one religion, for the purpose of jumping into another? See what good this philosophical friskiness has done you, and on what sort of ground you are come at last. You are so wonderfully sagacious, that you flounder in mud at every step; so amazingly clearsighted, that your eyes cannot see an inch