A VISIT TO THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDens.

BY LEIGH HUNT.

I WENT to the Zoological Gardens the other day, for the first time, to see my old friends, the wild beasts" (grim intimates of boyhood), and enjoy their lift in the world from their lodgings in Towers and Exeter Changes, where they had no air, and where I remember an elephant wearing boots, because the rats gnawed his feet! The first thing that struck me, next to the beauty of the Gardens, and the pleasant thought that such flowery places were now prepared for creatures whom we lately thrust into mere dens and dust-holes, was the quantity of life and energy presented to one's eyes! What motion!-what strength!what active elegance! What prodigious chattering, and brilliant colours, in the maccaws and parrakeets! What fresh, clean, and youthful salience in the lynx! What a variety of dogs, all honest fellows apparently, of the true dog kind; and how bounding, how intelligent, how fit to guard our doors and our children, and scamper all over the country! And then the Persian greyhound!-How like a patrician dog (better even than Landseer's), and made as if expressly to wait upon a Persian prince: its graceful slenderness, darkness, and long silken ears, matching his own gentlemanly figure, and well-dressed beard!

We have life enough, daily, round about us-amazing, if we did but think of it; but our comparative indifference is a part of our own healthy activity. The blood spins in us too quickly to let us think too much. This sudden exhibition of life, in shapes to which we are unaccustomed, reminds us of the wonderful and ever-renewing vitality of all things. Those animals look as fresh, and strong, and beautiful, as if they were born in a new beginning of the world. Men in cities hardly look as much!-and horses dragging hackney-coaches are not happy specimens; but the horse in the new carriage is one, if we considered it. The leaves and flowers in the nursery-gardens exhibit the same untiring renewal of life; and the sunbeam, in the thick of St. Giles's, comes as straight and young as ever from the godlike orb that looks millions of miles at us, out of the depths of millions of ages; but it is a visiter as good-natured as it is great, and therefore we do not think too much even of the sunbeam. This bounding creature, however, in its cagethis is not a common sight; so it comes freshly and wonderfully upon our reflections. What brilliancy in its eyes!-What impetuous vigour in its leap!-What fearlessness of knocks and blows!--And how pleasant to think it is on the other side of its bars! What a sensation would ensue, if that pretty-coated creature, which eats a cake so good-naturedly, were suddenly out of its cage, and the cry were heard-" A tiger loose!" -"A panther!"-"A lion!" What a rush and screaming of all the ladies to the gates!-and of gentlemen too! And how the human voices, and those of the parrakeets, would go shrieking to heaven together! Fancy the bear suddenly jumping off his pole upon the cakeshop! A tiger let loose at day-time would not be so bad as at night. Perhaps he would be most frightened himself. There was an account of one that got loose in Piccadilly, and slunk down into a cellar, where

he was quietly taken; but at night, just before feeding, it might not be so pleasant. The papers gave an account, some weeks ago, of a lion which got out of one of the travelling caravans in the country, and, after lurking about the hedges, tore a labourer that he met, in full daylight. Nervous people, in imaginative states of the biliary vessels-timid gentlemen, taking easy rides-old ladies, too comfortable in their homes and arm-chairs-must sometimes feel misgivings while making their circuit of the Regent's Park, after reading paragraphs of this description. Fancy yourself coming home from the play or opera, humming "Deh vieni, non tardar," or "Meet me by moonlight alone;" and, as you are turning a corner in Wimpole Street, meeting- -a tiger! What should you say? You would find yourself pouring forth pretty set of Rabelaesque exclamations:

Eh-Oh-Oh Lord!-Hollo!-Help!-Help !-Murder !-Tigers !U—u—u—u—u—u!-My God!-Policeman!"

Enter Policeman.

Policeman." Good God!-A gentleman with a tiger!"

[Exit Policeman.

In one of Molière's exquisite extravaganzas between his acts, is a scene betwixt a man and a bear, who has caught him in its arms. The man tries every expedient he can think of to make the bear considerate; and, among others, flatters him in the most excessive manner, calling him, at last, his Royal Highness. The bear, however, whom we are to fancy all this while on its hind legs, looking the man, with horrible indifference, in the face, and half dancing him from side to side in its heavy shuffle, is not at all to be diverted from his dining purposes, and he is about to act accordingly, when hunters come up and take off his attention. Up springs the man into a tree; and with the cruelty of mortified vanity (to think of all the base adulation he has been pouring forth) the first words he utters respecting his "Royal Highness" are, "Shoot him."

Not without its humour, though real, is a story of a bear in one of the northern expeditions (I forget which). Two men, a mate and a carpenter, had landed somewhere to cut wood, or look for provisions and one of them was stooping down, when he thought some shipmate had followed him, and was getting, boy-like, on his shoulders. “Be quiet," said he, "get down." The unknown did not get down; and the man, looking up as he stooped, saw the carpenter staring at him in horror. "Oh, mate!" exclaimed the carpenter," it's a bear!" Think what the man must have felt, when he heard this explanation of the weight on his shoulders! No tragedy, however, ensued.

Pleasant enough are such stories, so ending; but of all deaths, that by a wild beast must be one of the most horrible. There is action, indeed, to diminish the horror; but frightful must be the unexpectedness-the unnaturalness-the clawing and growling-the hideous and impracticable fellow-creature, looking one in the face, struggling with us, mingling his breath with ours-tearing away scalp or shoulderblade.

To return, however, to our Gardens-places safe enough, doubtless, and only to be mentioned on this point by way of jest. The next thing that struck me was the quiet; and in connexion with this, the creatures' accommodation of themselves to circumstances, and the human-like sort

of intercourse into which they get with their visiters. With wild beasts we associate the ideas of rage and howling. On reflection, we recollect that this is not bound to be the case; that travellers pass deserts in daytime, and neither hear nor see them; and that it is at night they are to be looked for in true wild-beast condition, and then only if raging with appetite. It is no very extraordinary matter, therefore, to find them quiet by day, especially when we consider how their wants are attended to; and yet we cannot but think it strange that they should be so, put, as they are, into an unnatural condition, under bars and bolts. More of this, however, presently. Let us look at them as making friends with us, receiving our buns and biscuits, and being as close to us (by permission of those same bars) as dogs and cats. This is a very different position of things from the respectful distance kept in the African sands or in the jungle! I am afraid it breeds contempt in some, or at least indifference; and that people do not always find the pleasure they expected in the sight. I could not help admiring one visiter the other day, who hastened from den to den, and from beast to bird, twirling an umbrella, and giving little self-complacent stops at each, not longer than if he were turning over a book of prints, while waiting to transact some business. "Hah!" he seemed to be saying to himself, "this is the panther, is it? Hm-Panther. What says the label here? Hyæna Capensis.' Hm-Hyæna-ah! a thing untameable. Grisly Bear.' Hah!-grisly-hm. Very like. Boa-Tiger Boa'-ah!-Boa in a box-Hm-Sleeping, I suppose. Very different from seeing him squeeze somebody. Hm, Well! I think it will rain. Terrible thing thatspoil my hat." Perhaps, however, I am doing the gentleman injustice, and he was only giving a glance, preparatory to a more than usual inspection. When a pleasure is great and multitudinous, one is apt to run it all over hastily in the first instance; as in an exhibition of paintings, or with a parcel of books.

It is curious to find one's-self (literally) hand and glove with a bear; giving him buns, and watching his face, like a schoolboy's, to 'see how he likes them. A reflection rises-" If it were not for those bars, perhaps he would be eating me." Yet how mild they and his food render him. We scrutinize his countenance and manners at leisure, and are amused with his apparently indolent yet active lumpishness, his heavy kind of intelligence (which will do nothing more than is necessary), his almost hand-like use of his long, awkward-looking toes, and the fur which he wears clumsily about him like a watchman's great-coat. The darker bears look, somehow, the more natural; at least to those whose imaginations have not grown up amidst polar narratives. The white bear in these Gardens has a horrible mixed look of innocence and cruelty. Some Roman tyrant kept a bear as one of his executioners, and called it "Innocence." We could imagine it to have had just such a face. From that smooth, unimpressible aspect there is no appeal. He has no ill-will to you; only he is fond of your flesh, and would eat you up as meekly as you would sup milk, or swallow a custard. Imagine his arms around you, and your fate depending upon what you could say to him, like the man in Molière. You feel that you might as well talk to a devouring statue, or to the sign of the Bear in Piccadilly, or to a guillotine, or to the cloak of Nessus, or to your own great-coat (to ask it to be not so heavy),

or to the smooth-faced wife of an ogre, hungry and deaf, and one that did not understand your language.

Another curious sensation arises from being so tranquil yourself, and slow in your movements, while you are close to creatures so full of emotion and action. And you know not whether to be more pleased or disappointed at seeing some of them look so harmless, and others so small. On calling your recollections together, you may know, as matters of fact, that lynxes and wolves are no bigger; but you have willingly made them otherwise, as they appear to you in the books of your childhood; and it seems an anti-climax to find a wolf no bigger than a common dog, and a lynx than a large cat. The lynx in these Gardens is a beautiful, bounding creature. You know him at once by his ears, if not by his eyes; but yet he does not strike you like the lynx you have read of. You are obliged to animate your respect for him, by considering him under the title of "cat-o'-mountain ;"

"The owl is abroad, the bat and the toad,

And so is the cat-o'-mountain."

But poor cat-o'-mountain is not abroad here, in the proper sense; he is "abroad and at home," and yet neither. You see him by daylight, without the proper fire in his eyes. You do not meet him in a mountainpass, but in a poor closet in Mary-le-bone; where he jumps about like a common cat, begging for something to eat. Let him look as he may,

he does not look so well as in a book.

I saw no lion. Whether there is any or not, at present, I cannot say, I believe there is; but friends get talking, and one of them moves hither or thither, and carries away the rest; and so things are passed by, I did not even see the rhinoceros; nor the beaver, which would not come out (if there); nor the scal (which I particularly wished to see, having a liking for seals and their affections:-there is one species in particular, remarkable for the mobility of its expression, which I should like to get acquainted with; but this is not the one in the Garden catalogue). The lioness was asleep, as all well-behaved wild beasts ought to be at that hour; and another, or a tigress (I forget which), pained the beholder by walking incessantly to and fro, uttering little moans. She seemed incapable of the philosophy of her fellow-captives. The dogs are an interesting sight, particularly the Persian greyhounds already mentioned, and the St. Bernard dogs, famous for their utility and courage. But it was a melancholy thing to see one of them barking and bounding incessantly for pieces of biscuit, and jerked back by the chain round his neck. It seemed an ill return for the Alpine services of his family.

The boa in his box was asleep. He is handsomely spotted: but the box formed a sorry contrast in the imagination with his native woods. He seemed prodigiously to want "air and exercise." Is not the box unconscionably small and confined; could not a snake-safe be contrived of good handsome dimensions? There is no reason why a serpent should not be made as comfortable as possible, even though he would make no more bones of us than we do of an oyster.

The squirrels are better off, and are great favourites, being natural crackers of nuts; but could no trees be contrived for them to climb, and no grass for their feet? It is unpleasant to see them so much on the bare ground.

The elephant would seem more comfortably situated than most. He has water to bathe in, mud to stick in, and an area many times bigger than himself for his circuit. Very interesting is it to see him throw bits of mud over himself, and to see, and hear him, suck the water up in his trunk and then discharge it into his great red throat; in which he also receives, with sage amenity, the biscuits of the ladies. Certainly, the more one considers an elephant, the more he makes good his claim to be considered the Doctor Johnson of the brute creation. He is huge, potent, sapient, susceptible of tender impressions, is a good fellow, likes as much water as the other did tea, gets on at a great uncouth rate when he walks, and though perhaps less irritable and melancholy, can take a witty revenge; as witness the famous story of the tailor that pricked him, and whom he drenched with ditch water. If he were suddenly gifted with speech, and we asked him if he liked his imprisonment, the first words he would utter would unquestionably be-" Why, no, Sir." Nor is it to be doubted, when going to dinner, that he would echo the bland sentiment of our illustrious metropolitan, on a like occasion, "Sir, I like to dine." If asked his opinion of his keeper, he would say, "Why, Sir, Hipkins is, upon the whole, a good fellow,'like myself, Sir, (smiling,) but not quite so considerate; he knows I love him, and presumes a little too much upon my forbearance. He teases me for the idle amusement of the bystanders. Sir, Hipkins takes the display of allowance for the merit of ascendancy."

This is what the elephant manifestly thought on the present occasion; for the keeper set a little dog at him, less to the amusement of the bystanders than he fancied; and the noble beast, after butting the cur out of the way, and taking care to spare him, as he advanced, (for one tread of his foot would have smashed the little pertinacious wretch as flat as a pancake,) suddenly made a stop, and, in rebuke of both of them, uttered a high indignant scream, much resembling a score of cracked trumpets. Enter the three lady-like and most curious giraffes, probably called forth by the noise, which they took, however, with great calmness. On close inspection, their faces express more insipidity and indifference than anything else—at least the one that I looked at, did; but they are extremely interesting from their novelty, and from a singular look of cleanliness, delicacy, and refinement, mixed with a certain gaucherie arising from their long, poking necks, and the disparity of length between their fore and hind legs. They look like young ladies of animals, naturally not ungraceful, but with bad habits. Their necks are not on a line with their fore legs, perpendicular and held up, nor yet arched like horses' necks, but make a feeble-looking, obtuse angle, completely answering to the word "poking:" the legs come up so close to the necks, that in front they appear to have no bodies; the back slopes like a hill, producing the singular disparity between the legs just mentioned; and the whole animal, being slender, light-coloured, and very gentle, gives you an idea of delicacy amounting to the fragile; the legs look as if a stick would break them in two, like glass. Add to this, a slow and uncouth lifting of the legs, as they walk, as if stepping over gutters; and the effect is just such as has been described,-the strangest mixture in the world of elegance and uncouthness. The people about them seemed to be constantly curry-combing them after a gentle fashion; for an extreme cleanliness is necessary to their health; and the novelty of the spectacle