ing us how to render happy and
healthful their imprisonment. He says very prettily, "What are town
gardens and shrubberies in squares, but an attempt to ruralise the city?
So strong is the desire in man to participate in country pleasures, that
he tries to bring some of them even to his room. Plants and birds are
sought after with avidity, and cherished with delight. With flowers he
endeavours to make his apartments resemble a garden; and thinks of
groves and fields, as he listens to the wild sweet melody of his little
captives. Those who keep and take an interest in song-birds, are often
at a loss how to treat their little warblers during illness, or to
prepare the proper food best suited to their various constitutions; but
that knowledge is absolutely necessary to preserve these little
creatures in health: for want of it, young amateurs and bird-fanciers
have often seen, with regret, many of their favourite birds perish."

Now, here we confess is a good physician. In Edinburgh we understand
there are about five hundred medical practitioners on the human
race--and we have dog-doctors, and horse-doctors, who come out in
numbers--but we have no bird-doctors. Yet often, too often, when the
whole house rings, from garret to cellar, with the cries of children
teething, or in the hooping-cough, the little linnet sits silent on his
perch, a moping bunch of feathers, and then falls down dead, when his
lilting life might have been saved by the simplest medicinal food
skilfully administered. Surely if we have physicians to attend our
treadmills, and regulate the diet and day's work of merciless ruffians,
we should not suffer our innocent and useful prisoners thus to die
unattended. Why do not the ladies of Edinburgh form themselves into a
Society for this purpose?

Not one of all the philosophers in the world has been able to tell us
what is happiness. Sterne's Starling is weakly supposed to have been
miserable. Probably he was one of the most contented birds in the
universe. Does confinement--the closest, most uncompanioned
confinement--make one of ourselves unhappy? Is the shoemaker, sitting
with his head on his knees, in a hole in the wall from morning to night,
in any respect to be pitied? Is the solitary orphan, that sits all day
sewing in a garret, while the old woman for whom she works is out
washing, an object of compassion? or the widow of fourscore, hurkling
over the embers, with the stump of a pipe in her toothless m