tents itself with flying two or three paces further off. Its habits are solitary."

What a thing to record! He killed ten of the innocent trustful birds without changing his position. A blush rises to our cheek as we read, for the heartless cruelty of this so-called scientific mind! Why, he didn't have the excuse of risk, which is the sportsman's justification! No, not even the enlivening plea of exercise, or of dash in the pursuit. It was massacre in cold blood of the most contemptible kind, and of the ten which he secured, no higher purpose was served so far as eight were concerned, than in the case of that lady, who killed a hundred robin red-breasts that she might tack their feathers on her dress fitly to personate Winter at a fancy ball.

We have always felt that the much-talked-of advantage to be gained from freedom in such matters was problematic. Even although all the knowledge that can possibly be realised by such experiments were in our hands to-day, is it quite an ascertained fact that it would be a gain to the world if it were at the cost of the hardening of the moral nature in most of those who took part in them or witnessed them-in those, too, the bulk of whom are hereafter to be "healers?" It has been

urged that the good of humanity which the vivisectionists, so they say, alone have in view, is supreme in the matter their argument pretty well covering the same ground as that taken by Dr. Michael Foster in his calm and able article in the volume of Macmillan's Magazine, for 1876. The good of the whole, they say, is what justifies, and must justify, destruction of great numbers of the lower creatures, and such experiments as are necessary to the progress of medical science. Apart from the question whether these experiments are fruitful or are barren, as Sir C. Bell and others had confessed that their experiments on living animals had been, it still remains doubtful, as we hold, what is absolutely the good of the whole. Suppose medical science to reach a secret which would secure the life of each individual, on the average, up to seventy years, only at the cost, or even at the risk merely, of dulling those sensibilities and sympathies which are pre-eminently the glory of humanity, some men might still doubt whether the gift would prove in the end a blessing. All arguments of this kind, in one word, rest on assumptions that imply omniscience, and the only safe corrective to such a tendency is to be found in the sense of present duty and right. "Do not evil that good may come," is

easily translated into practical application in "Be not cruel to a beast to-day in view of the problematic healing of men and women months or years hereafter;" and certainly the descriptions of the animals while under experiment give the impression that great pain must be suffered by many of them. "Do not hurt an ant, which draws a grain of corn," says the Eastern sage, " for it has life, and this sweet life is dear to it."

ROBERT BURNS AS A CELT

THERE was one thing in Mr. Stopford Brooke's admirable and characteristic "Primer of English Literature" which very much astonished us. As we read we fancied we must have misconceived his words, and had failed for some element in intelligence. We thought of Douglas Jerrold's appeal to his wife in the case of Mr. Browning's "Sordello;" but, unfortunately, our remedy towards self-composure and self-satisfaction was not so immediate. And this, although we have always read Mr. Stopford Brooke with the greatest refreshment and pleasure. His "Religion of the Poets" was at once instructive and exhilarating. Nothing finer could well be said. for Wordsworth than he said there. Our difficulty arose from the manner in which Mr. Stopford Brooke has expressed himself about Robert Burns and the Celtic spirit. Mr. Matthew Arnold, who has ex

hausted the Celtic spirit, has dealt with Mr. Stopford Brooke's Primer, and praised it, and has not said a word about the Celtic spirit and Robert Burns. Therefore we humbly venture to state our difficulty, and also to give some reasons for qualifying in our own mind. Mr. Stopford Brooke writes at one part of his Primer :

The first of the Celtic elements in poetry is the love of wild nature for its own sake. There is a passionate, close, and poetical observation and description of natural scenery in Scotland from the earliest time of its poetry, such as we do not possess in English poetry till the time of Wordsworth. The second is the love of colour. All early Scottish poetry differs from English in the extraordinary way in which colour is insisted on, and at times in the lavish exaggeration of it. The third is the wittier, more rollicking humour in the Scottish poetry, which is distinctly Celtic in contrast with that humour which has its root in sadness and which belongs to the Teutonic races. Few things are really more different than the humour of Chaucer and the humour of Dunbar, than the humour of Cowper and the humour of Burns. These are the special Celtic elements in the

Lowland poetry.

Its national elements came into it from the circumstances under which Scotland rose into a separate kingdom. The first of these is the strong, almost fierce assertion of national life. The English were as national as the Scots, and felt the emotion of patriotism as strongly. But they had no need to assert it; they were not oppressed. But for nearly forty years the Scotch resisted for their very life the efforts of England to conquer them. And the war of freedom left its traces on their poetry from Barbour to Burns and Walter Scott