two tails, but neither of them full grown, and we argued | Having your blood sucked is, therefore, a great proof of that at the time the animal lost his tail he must have suf- high heraldry and perfectibility in the scale of creation. fered some division of the stump. Being at that time a If animals were endowed with speech and pride like naturalist, i. e. very cruel, I immediately caught a lizard, man, we might imagine one creature boasting to another, pulled off his tail, notched the vertebræ, and turned him as a proof of his importance, loose again. Our conjectures were right: the animal in "And I, too, also have my louse!!" two or three weeks had two tails growing out like the (To be continued.) one we had seen. I repeated this experiment several times, and it always appeared to succeed, and all the two-tailed lizards were called mine. Now this power of reproduction increases as you descend the scale; as an instance, take the polypus, which is as near as possible at the bottom of it. If you cut a polypus into twenty pieces without any regard to division, in a short time you will have twenty perfect polypi. Now the deductions I would draw from these remarks are- That the most perfect animals are least capable of reproduction and most sensible of pain. That as the scale of nature descends, animals become less perfect and more capable of reproduction. Ergo-they cannot possibly feel the same pain as the more perfect. Now, with respect to fish, they are very inferior in the scale of creation, being, with the exception of the cetaceous tribe, which class with the mammalia, all cold blooded animals, and much less perfect than reptiles or many insects. The nervous system is the real seat of all pain, and the more perfect the animal, the more complicated is that system: with cold-blooded animals the nervous organisation is next to nothing. Most fish, if they disengage themselves from the hook, will take the bait again, and if they do not, it is not on account of the pain, but because their instinct tells them there is danger. Moreover, it is very true, as Sir H. Davy observes, that fish are not killed by the hook, but by the hook's closing their mouths and producing suffocation. How, indeed, would it otherwise be possible to land a salmon of thirty pounds weight in all its strength and vigour with a piece of gut not thicker than three or four hairs? Upon the same grounds that I argue that fish feel little comparative pain, so do I that the worm, which is so low in the scale of creation, does not suffer as supposed. Its writhings and twistings on the hook are efforts to escape natural to the form of the animal, and can be considered as little or nothing more. At the same time, I acknow. ledge, and indeed prove by my own arguments, that it is very cruel to bob for whale. To suppose there are no gradations of feeling as well as perfection in the animal kingdom, would not only be arguing against all analogy, but against the justice and mercy of the Almighty, who does not allow a sparrow to fall to the earth without his knowledge. He gave all living things for our use and our sustenance; he gave us intellect to enable us to capture them: to suppose, therefore at the same time that he endowed them with so fine a nervous organisation as to make them undergo severe tortures previous to death, is supposing what is contrary to that goodness and mercy which, as shown towards us, we are ready to acknowledge and adore. I cannot finish this subject without making a remark upon creation and its perfectibility. All respectable animals, from man down to a certain point of the scale, have their lice or parasites to feed upon them. Some wit, to exemplify this preying upon one another, wrote the following: "Great fleas have little fleas, And less fleas to bite them; This however is not strictly true. Parasites attach themselves only to the great. Upon these they can fatten. From the London New Monthly Magazine. CONVERSATIONS OF AN AMERICAN WITH LORD BYRON. During Lord Byron's stay at Florence, it fell in my way to visit that city in the course of an Italian tour. I had but newly arrived from the western world, and was ignorant of his lordship's from a walk along the road that leads from the residence there. I was returning one afternoon Porta San Gallo up the Pian di Mugnone, when I remarked an individual sauntering, with a somewhat irregular gait, along the stony bed of the torrent that rushes down the Mugnone in the rainy season. He seemed to be amusing himself with picking up pebbles, and now and then chucking them into the water that brawled in a shallow stream along its stony bed. A servant on horseback, holding another horse by the bridle, was waiting his movements upon the road tt Wound along the banks of the torrent. It was some days afterwards that I discovered that this individual was Lord Byron; but as I, of course, made no conjecture of this at the moment, the poet escaped a regular stare, and I took no further notice of him than was comprised in a glance or two. His occupation of poking among the pebbles recalled to my mind the adventure of the foolish Calandrino on the same spot, so amusingly told by Boccaccio, in his narrative of the tricks of the two wags Bruno and Buffalmaco. I paid this unknown individual the compliment of imagining that he might be somebody quite as foolish as the unlucky wight aforementioned, and though a subsequent discovery showed that a greater than Calandrino was here, yet I am by no means certain that the noble bard, "the great Napoleon of the realms of rhyme," did not practise a search through life after a phantom, to the full as tantalising and fruitless as Calandrino's hunt after the invisible stone: -"unfound the boon, unslaked the thirst, Once or twice after this, I chanced to encounter him on the same route, and heard him characterised by the peasants as a Milor Inglese, which appellation, however, they bestow upon any traveling Saunders or Tomkins, who goes a cavallo and gives himself airs. I never noticed him in the Cascine, which is the regular fashionable drive and promenade, and lies at the opposite extremity of the city: it is an extensive park, and filled every afternoon with crowds of people, particularly of the foreign residents. This, however, was probably the chief reason for his avoiding the spot, in that unsocial humour towards his own countrymen which is so distinguishing a mark in the history of his foreign residence and travels. As a poet, however, he might be excused for re- though the language, of course, may not be altosorting to the environs of the Porta San Gallo gether a literal transcript. Lord Byron lived then rather than to the Cascine, for there are reasons in a street in the rear of the church of Santa that justify the preference. The Cascine is a Maria Annunziata. A large garden at present level extent of regular artificial walks and alleys, intervenes between the house he occupied and the like the Tuileries and the Champs Elysées, with Palazzo Ximenes. It is a pleasant and very rea prospect about as circumscribed. The Contorni tired spot, with extensive and delightful views toof the Porta San Gallo present a more cheerful ward the north. He received me with great diversity of landscape, with variegations of sur- affability, and began chatting upon all sorts of face, and the most ravishing sunset views of the subjects, asking twenty questions in a breath. I hill of Fiesole, and the mountains towards the was a good deal surprised at the first sight of him; north. The walks, too, in this quarter are little first, on discovering that he was the person I had frequented on ordinary occasions, and Byron was seen on a former occasion, and whom, in my "never less alone than when alone." fancy, I had set down as a decided nobody-certainly not for a poet;-secondly, on remarking the total difference between the real Byron and all the portraits of him I had ever beheld. The likeness seemed to be drawn from the "Corsair," "Lara," or "Harold," a frowning, supercilious, disdainful thing; but here was an ordinary-looking man, who, if he was not short and thick, was at least shortish and thickish; and whose countenance had good humour to recommend it, but which, in spite of a certain regularity of features, I could not think remarkably handsome. Of his dress I remember but little; only his, shirt collar was not turned down as in the portraits, and his pantaloons were strapped close over the feet, the lame one drawn up a little out of sight, which I understand was his usual practice. Having learnt, at length, that the great poet was a dweller in the city, I naturally felt a strong desire of obtaining an introduction to one whose literary fame then pervaded all Europe, and was no less widely extended in the remote hemisphere of the west. But there was no getting access to him-so they said he was snug as an oyster, and not to be approached without a special letter of introduction. Letters of introduction, I must add, | are my abhorrence; I have been something of a traveller, and gone up and down through various sorts of business, and, upon my word, cannot recollect a single instance where a letter of introduction did me any good; at the present day, if I ever take one from a friend whom it would be uncivil to disregard, I commonly light my cigar with it, and introduce myself-I always find it answer; but this en passant. Byron, they said, would see no Englishman; I was an Englishman in language, though not in nationality, and imagined his Angliphobia extended no less to Jonathan than to John Bull. At first, therefore, I was led to think it a useless endeavour to seek an interview with the haughty Childe, but was presently informed by an individual somewhat familiar with his habits, that he was not at all shy of the Americans. I therefore lost no time in despatching him a note, soliciting the honour of paying him my respects in person, to which I received a very polite reply, stating that he would be happy to see me to-morrow afternoon. This invitation, I need not say, was punctually complied with. I was at that time but a youth, and had no object in view in seeking his company beyond the common purposes of a young man on his rambles. Byron too was young; no one foresaw the abrupt termination that cut short his splendid career. Nothing was more distant, therefore, from my thoughts than the project of bringing away and booking his conversation, or the minutiae of his dress, behaviour, habitation, &c., which become objects of so much curious interest to the world after the death of a celebrated man, but which it is not the best taste to obtrude upon the public during his lifetime. My recollections, therefore, of the several matters which occupy this paper, have become a trifle weakened during the space that has intervened between that day and the present; yet the novelty to me-of the thing, and that strong interest which attaches to every thing connected with so extraordinary a personage, produced so deep and abiding an impression, that the substance, generally, of the conversation that passed between us, remains in my recollection as strongly as ever; I began a formal apology for the liberty I had taken with him, and hinted a conjecture that he was already annoyed by too frequent visits, but he cut me short by a laugh, and ran on in a very sarcastic way about the traveling English. I have been strongly induced to believe that the dislike which he affected to feel for his own countrymen was a mere crotchet, whatever his hostility towards individuals might have been. Why write volume after volume to gain the admiration of a people whom he hated or despised? In fact, he no more hated his countrymen in a body, than he hated his title, which, in like manner, he pretended at times to hold in disesteem; but the affectation of singularity gets into wiser heads sometimes than people are aware of. However, be this as it will, I had no reason to complain of any coolness of demeanour in his intercourse with me. "I am extremely partial," said he, "to the Americans; and if I enjoy any reputation among them, I can rely upon it as arising from an unbiassed judgment. They can have, of course, no original predilections for a titled personage, and the praise they bestow upon me must be sincere. I remember reading in the biography of George Frederic Cooke an extract from his journal, wherein he mentioned having seen the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers' lying on the table of a public house somewhere in the interior of the United States. This was the first thing that sounded in my ears like real fame." I set this down at the time for a mere compliment, yet, after all, the circumstance, trifling as it was, may have been the foundation of that friendly bias toward the country which displays itself in many passages of his writings. I am aware at the same time that, in some published volume of his conversations, he is reported as saying, that he was never sincere in his praises of the Americans; but as this asser-hate me en masse for telling them homely truths, tion, according to the same authority, was uttered and for showing them that I despise their cant." in a moment of ill-humour, occasioned by an at-"Do you really suppose," asked I, "that manners tack upon him from some American writer, the are more depraved now than they were a century insincerity is quite as likely to belong to the ago?" "Yes," replied he; "and the fact is nodenial. where more evident than in the prevalence of cant, and that squeamishness in point of language that has gained ground in proportion as real purity of morals has declined. What is gained in language is lost in virtue, and half mankind are shallow enough to be imposed upon by the deception." Lord Byron conversed with great readiness, but rot at all in a sermonizing, bookish way. He skipped from one subject to another, broke off into digressions, left things half said, was often incoherent, sometimes ungrammatical, and now and then, in spite of his readiness at an idea, was at a loss for a word to express a very simple thing. What he uttered was, in a thousand instances, better said than if it had been coolly elaborated by study, yet it was no more than the prompting of the instant. We talked in a rambling style for some time, in the course of which he grew more cheerful than he appeared to be at first. His countenance struck me as susceptible of a great variety of expression, and his smile was in the highest degree engaging, although the habitual expression of his countenance, when not under the excitement of talk, was rather sombre than lively. I complimented him upon his good spirits, in which he allowed I had judged correctly, as he had not for many days felt more cheerful, or rather, as he explained it, less vexed with himself and the world. "Nobody's temper," he added, "is subject to greater ups and downs than mine. I am at times so hippish, that I am unfit for any Christian company; I fear many of my visiters go away with the opinion that I am icy and unsocial, though the truth is, when the fit is off, I am as much a boy as any stripling of eighteen. It is surprising how small an affair will damp my spirits: the merest trifle, if I be in a 'concatenation accordingly,'the recollection of a thing done with and forgotten a dozen years ago,—a word said by somebody that neither I nor the rest of the world care anything about;-things, in short, not worth mentioning. I have actually laughed at myself," continued he, "when I reflected afterwards that such nothings disturbed me. It is but fair to add, that trifles can sometimes cheer as well as vex me." He talked of himself and of his personal affairs with a freedom which rather surprised me. But some one has said that in his poetry he "made the world his confidant." In conversation he certainly was not reserved upon many points where ordinary persons would have felt it incumbent upon them to be specially discreet with an acquaintance of recent formation. His sketches of his friends and intimates were drawn with very bold and dashing strokes. I should conjecture, however, that his judgments of individuals were less correct than his opinions of mankind in the abstract; as, in the former case, his impressions were to a considerable extent the result of sudden impulses, while, in the latter, his convictions arose from long and varied observation. He allowed frankly that he was indebted to the hints of others for some of the most esteemed passages in his poetry. "I never," said he, “considered myself interdicted from helping myself to another man's stray ideas. I have Pope to countenance me in this, 'solemque quis dicere falsum audeat? Pope was a great hunter up of grains of wheat in bushels of chaff : perhaps I have not been so laborious a searcher, but I have been no more scrupulous than he in making use of whatever fell in my way. Mankind have been writing books so long, that an author may be excused for offering no thoughts absolutely new; we must select, and call that invention. A writer at the present day has hardly any other resource than to take the thoughts of others and cast them into new forms of association and contrast. Plagiarism, to be sure, is branded of old, but it is never held criminal except when done in a clumsy way, like stealing among the Spartans. A good thought is often far better expressed at second hand than at the first utterance. If a rich material has fallen into incompetent hands, it would be the height of injustice to debar a more skilful artisan from taking possession of it and working it up. Commend me to a good pilferer,-you may laugh at it as a paradox, but I assure you the most original writers are the greatest thieves." "You will go to England, of course," said he to me. "Yes, merry England," replied I. "I know of no such place," returned he; "but as to the England that gave me birth, the people there have the saddest way of being merry that can be imagined." I remarked that he had lived some time among the Italians, and had adopted their notions on the subject: they can imagine no merriment disconnected with sunshine, vineyards, and the open air, and are unable to conceive how a human being can be cheerful amid fog and coal- The conversation happening to turn upon relismoke. "No, no," returned he; "I retain per-gion-"People give themselves," said Byron, "a fectly well the recollection of all I felt when in great deal of pains in guessing at my religious England. Society," he repeated, " is in an unna- belief, if I may judge from the criticisms upon my tural state in England: mountains of wealth writings, as well as the anonymous letters sent contrasted with the deepest abysses of poverty. me;-they pretend to discover so many contradicThe higher classes are an egotistical, vain, frivo- tory sentiments in what I have said, as if they lous, and degraded set; the middle classes befool expected me to be settled and distinct in a matter and exhaust themselves in their attempts to ape which is clear to nobody. Thousands, I dare say, the higher; and the lower class are miserable. enquire of one another what my religion is, who You see I am not blind to the defects of my coun-have never in their lives thought of asking the trymen ; God knows I never flattered them, and same question with regard to themselves. Stop they give me no thanks for my honesty. They the first man you meet, and put him upon his oath, a hundred to one that he never took pains to satisfy himself what things he truly and confidently believed, though his professions may be as distinct and literal as creeds and articles can make them. It is one thing to believe a doctrine from full and convincing evidence, and another thing to believe it, because we tell one another so. I am not in good odour with the professedly pious, yet I am a better Christian than nine-tenths of them. Most people consider me, I suppose, as something be tween a Pagan and a Pyrrhonist; but I am one step in advance of the dubitating Greek, for I believe that pleasure is pleasant, and though every thing is uncertain, yet something must be true. This, to be sure, is a very comprehensive creed; yet it has the merit of being plain and significant, which can be said of few others." ceased to remind his countrymen of their failings, and his misfortunes were the cause of his poetical fame; for had he passed his life as a magistrate of Florence, his grand poem never would have been written. Last, though not least, he separated from his wife. I do not know whether it will fall to my lot to die an exile like him, though in my present temper of mind, I feel little inclination to avoid such a fate. The kindest wish that an Arab could express was, 'May you die among your friends.' But the refinements of modern civilisation have put in our mouths the equally fervent ejaculation of, 'Save me from my friends."" His countenance fell at these words, and I perceived that thoughts, not the most agreeable, had been stirred up by this part of the conversation. But, in a few moments, he resumed a certain I remarked to him the odd effect with which gaiety of manner, and exclaimed, "No matter, 'sesmany points in the manners of the Italians struck sa, let the world slide.' After all, we give ourme, new as I was to this quarter of the world; in selves a vast deal of anxiety that turns out to be particular, the observation of a lady, on my as- useless; the greatest error a man can commit is, suring her that I had as yet formed no liaison in to think too seriously of the business of human the city, who exclaimed, with a stare of incredu-life. The whole is a cheat-a brilliant deception. lity, "What! five days in Florence, and no To fill up a few hours with business, to smile and amorosa yet?" "Ah!" said Byron, "these people sigh half a dozen times, and round off the whole are no hypocrites, say what you will of the free- with a slumber-is there any thing more than this? dom of their manners; there is no cant prevalent I don't know," continued he, "whether I shall live here. Go to England, and you will find a laxity of morals as great as in any city of Italy, though it does not strike the eye at first sight, under the ostentatious prudery and icy manners of the people." "But don't you think it best for the public morals in certain cases," said I, "to assume a virtue though we have it not?" No," ," said he; "for the consequence must be the common result of all dissimulation: we begin by deceiving others, and we end by deceiving ourselves; so that, in the upshot, we imagine ourselves virtuous, because we have practised telling the world we are so. Just so it has turned out in England. The English imagine themselves the most moral people in the world, and they are only the best satisfied with their own morality." I to be very old-most probably I shall not; but I feel curious to know how an old man feels, and I make it a point to question every aged man that falls in my way as to the state.of his sensations. They commonly tell me life is not worth enjoying; yet all of them wish to live on, which I account vastly foolish. Young as I am in years, feel old; and how I shall look upon life twenty years hence, causes me some speculation. At my age, one would be called in the prime of life; yet my thoughts are sere and yellow. At eighteen the feelings begin to deaden; at twenty-five the sharpest edge of every sensation is decidedly taken off; and at thirty, there is nothing worth living for. The greatest of all living puzzles is, to know for what purpose so strange a being as man was "I have been in love a great many times," said created. The most satisfactory definition of the Byron, "but I always had a low opinion of human species is one which I found in a book the women!" This remark from such a man as other day. It was this, 'Man may be considered Byron, startled me, and I could not avoid express-as-a digestive tube! But mind,-the book was ing my surprise, adding, "that such a declaration a medical one. would not be believed by his fair readers." But "At school," said Byron, "I used to imagine I he persisted in the assertion, and asked me if I was thought dull, which mortified me exceedingly; thought Raphael had a very exalted notion of the for my own part, I thought myself neither above sex, because he painted so many graceful and en-nor below mediocrity. I was very fond of degaging female figures? "As a proof of his actual taste and discernment in female matters," added Byron, "look at his Fornarina, the idol of his affections, a strapping country hoyden-as fat, coarse, and unsentimental in looks, as one could desire. But, after all, as to women, there is no living with them nor without them." sultory reading, but went to my task as a task. I remember, however, one occasion on which I was beset by the suspicion, that I had less intellect than the other boys; the thought made me shed tears, but the next day I laughed to think I had been vexed by such an apprehension. I made rhymes, I cannot tell how early; certainly as soon Dante, he observed, could not have been pos- as eight or nine. They were very wretched, of sessed by any very deep-rooted passion for his course; but I remembered some of them afterBeatrice, inasmuch as he married Gemma Donati wards, and they were better than I expected. within a year after her death. "Dante," said Among other things, I recollect some doggerel in Byron, "is a favourite with me: there are many the ballad style, about a sea-fight; for I was points in which I resemble him. He was a good possessed at one period with a strong whim to be hater; witness the truculency with which he a sailor, and spent hours in imagining myself an has cut up his enemies in the Divina Com-admiral, strutting on the quarter-deck. This was media.' He was exiled from his home-he never poetry, for it was one of the first movements of that perpetual inclination of the mind to detach to withdraw from the scene at an early hour!" itself from the humdrum scenery of real life, that These remarks struck me, as I had myself been makes our whole existence a struggle. 'Tis of impressed with the belief that he had a spice of no use to say what I think of myself now; a great madness in his composition, but never was premany people pretend to know me much better pared for the open avowal of such a thing on his than I profess to know myself. The judgments part. "Madness, or insanity," he added, "is much men pass upon their own characters are com- more prevalent than people imagine; indeed their monly extravagant or preposterous. Dr. Johnson notions respecting the nature of it are very loose. pronounced himself a good humoured fellow! There are three stages of it, and it goes by three Think of surly Sam pretending to good humour." names-oddity, eccentricity, and insanity. One Notwithstanding the severe and condemnatory who differs a little from the rest of the world in language in which he had indulged in speaking his whims, taste, or behaviour, is called odd; he of many individuals of his acquaintance, yet he who differs still more is called eccentric; and afterwards reverted to them in a style that showed when this difference passes a certain bound it is he felt a sincere regard for them. "Nothing is termed insanity. All men of genius are a little more false," said he, "than the common notion mad." "Do you think," said I, "that Scott-is that friendship is dependent upon similarity of mad?" He seemed a little puzzled at this, and taste and temper. There is ******, one of the allowed that few people would call him so, and few to whom I feel really attached; we agree so he might pass for the exception that formed the little in opinion, that whoever heard our disputes rule. He then spoke of dreams, and said that he would imagine we were born to be eternal an- once dreamed of seeing his own ghost. "I was tagonists instead of friends: caprice exists as not at all frightened," added be, "but was thrown much in friendship as in love. There are hun-into a strange puzzle of thought in endeavouring dreds of men, too, whom I dislike, without know-to account for the existence of the ghost indeing the reason why, though I have often had the pendent of myself; which proves that one can dislike removed upon subsequent acquaintance. reason in a dream. I am not certain I should beI am a great physiognomist, and cannot help have with half so much coolness and discretion forming a judgment of a man by his countenance. were I to encounter a ghost wide awake." One-half mankind have no particular expression I should before have remarked that this conin the face, and in half the others the expression versation was the result of several visits which I is dubious, but the remainder have speaking fea- subsequently paid him, as at our first interview tures. Sir Walter Scott," he added, "had a he confined himself for the most part to such dubious face: Fox looked like a Dutch burgo- rambling disjointed chat as might amuse and master." satisfy a visiter whom possibly he might not enByron had always spoken of Scott in the highest courage to repeat his call. I had not thought terms of commendation, both as a man and as a of going twice, but as he pressed me to do so in writer. "Other authors," said he, "have written a manner that denoted something beyond a mere better than he, but no one has written so much, formality, I complied, and on that and all future and written it all so well. What a rich inven- occasions he discoursed with the freedom and tion is his delineation of character!" I instanced openness of an old acquaintance. We were among his defects the imperfect construction of looking from the window into the garden, in the some of the stories, such as their improbability, midst of which was a well: a pair of asses were &c. "The truth is," said Byron, "no story trudging round and round to move the machinery ought to be well constructed, or probable, in the by which the water was raised for irrigating the ordinary sense of the word. If you relate only garden. "A thousand times," said Byron, "I common events, and ascribe actions to such mo- have asked myself whether it may not be possible tives only as would produce them in common that the notion of Pythagoras may be true; and, characters, what materials have you for a ro- in such a case, would a man change his lot for mance? The drama is a picture of life, where the worse by transmigrating into the body of one the objects represented are real, though the of the asses yonder? What is our life but a round grouping is such as the ordinary business of man- of monotonous occupations and wearisome amusekind does not exhibit." "What do you think," ments? and what is the result of all human knowasked I, "to be the best drawn character in Eng-ledge and human enquiries but to end where we lish romance ?" "Tom Pipes, by all means," began? Nay, the ass has the advantage of the replied his lordship. man, for he does not think. We talk of man's Byron had a great fondness for lugubrious sub- superiority in the possession of intellect, but the jects, and talked of death in a manner that show-only purpose it serves is to make him wretched." ed an uncommon tendency of thought that way in "Civilisation," he continued, "seems to have a person so young. "I have long been reconciled done nothing for human happiness: no age so to the thoughts of dying," said he, which I ac- civilised as the present, yet at no time has the counted for by suggesting that an event so far off condition of mankind been so miserable. Ninecould excite but little terror. "You mistake," tenths of the people you meet will confess that said he; "I contemplate the possibility, and even they are weary of their existence, but who ever the probability of an early death, when I make up heard a savage complain that he was unhappy? my mind to welcome it. But there is one thought Even in ancient times there appears to have been to which I never could be reconciled, which is a deep-founded belief that he was the happiest or that of losing my reason; and the possibility of the least miserable who had the least to do with such a catastrophe late in life makes me willing life. We apply the term 'philosophy' to a state |