the pages of Maga. But nature
is inexhaustible in all her creations. You might study a lifetime, and
yet not fully master the properties of one of those little Infusoria
that wriggle or spin about in a phial of foul or fair water, and a still
wider subject of study is of course supplied by any larger animal, such
as a Cockney, placed as he is a little lower than the angels, and
half-way down, or there abouts, between a man and a chimpanzee.

Upon careful inquiry it would probably be found, that in most nations
the population, though all purporting to be men and women, consists in a
good measure of beings that stand several degrees below the point of
humanity. France, among several specimens of a higher order, has
occasionally shown that a considerable proportion of its inhabitants was
a hideous cross between the tiger and the baboon. Holland has had its
Grotius and its Erasmus, but the otter and the beaver breed make up the
mass of those who go by the name of Dutchmen. There has been no want in
Germany of clear-sighted men, but the mole, the bat, and the owl furnish
a large contingent to the ranks of its _literati_. In other nations we
see a greater or less preponderance of the wolf or the bear, the goat or
the goose, the ass, the hog, or the hippopotamus. Such being the
universal condition of the world, we should rather be proud than
otherwise, that, in England, we can boast of a secondary tribe, made,
perhaps, by some of nature's journeymen, but that yet imitate humanity
so respectably, so amiably, and so amusingly, as the Cockney must be
admitted to do.

A Cockney is by locality very much what a tailor is by trade. Though a
remote sub-multiple of a man, he is enterprising, indefatigable, cutting
his way to his object through every thing with a ready tongue and a
quick wit. Yet he is deficient in some qualities indispensable to the
species _homo_. Courage the Cockney undoubtedly possesses, because he is
always among those who are said to rush in where others fear to tread.
But veneration is utterly wanting in his composition; and here the
resemblance to the tailor is conspicuous; as we never knew a single snip
that had the slightest reverence for any thing under heaven--if, indeed,
the assertion should not be made in still broader terms. In the tailor
this effect, defective, comes by an obvious cause. The intolerable
liberties which the vulgar fraction is permitted to take with people's
persons, divesting the best a