ance by saying that the roads were dangerous for his clients, seeing that cats were everywhere lying in wait for them, and finally, having exhausted all modes of delay, he made an eloquent speech on the injustice of proceeding against the whole number at once, and demanded that each rat should be tried separately. This speech, says the historian, was recalled to his memory by the Waldensians when, as president of the Parlement of Provence. he was obliged to take part in the persecution of those unfortunate sectaries.

Felix Malleolus, in his "Tractatus de Exorcismis," relates how, in his own days (1451), the Bishop of Lausanne solemnly cursed the leeches which did much harm to the larger fish in the lake. "Whereby he accomplished much in repelling and driving away those beasts. But many persons, not weighing the divine mysteries or entirely ignorant of them, spoke evil of the said bishop on this matter. Nevertheless, all the doctors of Heidelberg having read and considered the thing gave their approval of it."

About the same time caterpillars with black heads and about the size of a woman's little finger did much harm in the diocese of Coire in Switzerland. "In winter" (says Malleolus) "they enter the ground and devour the roots of grass and herbs, so that the whole territory appears withered in springtime. And in summer they take wings and sit on the trees and eat leaves and fruit." They were summoned before the provincial magistrate, but did not appear, so the judge "on account of their small size and tender age" appointed a curator and advocate who urged that they were creatures of God, in immemorial possession of the country, and only followed their natural instincts. "So the inhabitants make a yearly compact with these insects, and devote to them a certain plot of ground, and so it is done to this day."

Very similar to this is the following case extracted by Menabrea from the records of the commune of St. Julien, a place still famous for its vineyards.

In the year 1545 the vineyards were ravaged by a small green beetle or

weevil, Rhynchites auratus. The people demanded their excommunication in the episcopal court of St. Jean de Maurienne. But the bishop's proctor replied that the earth was created to nourish insects, as well as men, and that therefore they must not act with too great rashness against these animals, but rather implore the divine mercy, repent of their sins, and pay their tithes. The commune then resorted to arbitration before François Bonnivard, doctor of law, the insects being represented by two advocates; but before the case was finished the beetles had disappeared. They returned, however, shortly afterwards in still greater numbers, and after prayers and processions had failed, the insects were regularly put on their trial, being represented by Antoine Filliol as procureur and Pierre Rambaud as advocate. On June 5 the latter proceeded to show cause why his clients should not be excommunicated. He urged first that only contumacious persons may be anathematized, and his clients had not been regularly summoned; secondly, animals were created before man, and were bidden by God to increase and multiply; they have therefore a divine right to the food requisite for this purpose; thirdly, animals are not to be excommunicated for following their natural instincts. Anticipating his opponent's case, he went on to urge that the subjection of animals to man, and the assertion that he who sows shall reap, are of no avail against the preceding arguments, and finally he advised the people of St. Julien to leave the insects alone and repent of their sins like the Ninevites. The advocate of the commune, François Foy, demanded a week's delay to reply to this, at the end of which the counsel for the defence requested a foreclosure; but another week was granted, and on June 19 Foy made a short speech arguing that animals were made for the use of man, wherefore they were acting wrongly if they harmed him, and might lawfully be anathematized. Another week was granted for Rambaud to reply, which he did in much the same terms as before. The plaintiffs seem to have now become doubtful as to the justice of their case, and a meeting of

the parishioners was called for the purpose of granting the beetles some territory where they might increase and multiply without harm to the vineyards. It was unanimously resolved to offer them some waste land near the village of Claret, the inhabitants reserving their right to pass through to certain ochre mines, and also to use it as a place of refuge in war time, "seeing that this place is a safe retreat in time of war, it being provided with springs, which will also benefit the said insects." On these conditions they agreed to grant the territory to the beetles "en bon forme et vallable à perpetuité."

This offer was made in court July 24, but the case was adjourned to August 20, and then till September 3, owing to the passage of the Duke of Savoy's troops. On September 3 Antoine Filliol refused the offer for his clients, "seeing that the place is sterile and produces nothing" (cum sit locus sterilis et nullius redditus), and demanded a verdict against the plaintiffs with costs. The opposing counsel replied that the spot abounded in trees and herbs, so experts were appointed to go and examine it, receiving three florins for their expenses. Here, unfortunately, the records have become a prey to time and injury, but there can be little doubt that the insects were duly excommunicated. These curious proceedings may be explained in several ways. The object in some cases, more especially those of later date, was perhaps merely to soothe the minds of the ignorant. Just as the nurse beats the "naughty chair" against which Tommy has knocked his head, so the Church cursed the wicked beetles or caterpillars which had devoured the harvests of her simple-minded children. Sometimes there may have been a wish to inculcate, as in the old "morality plays," lessons of justice and consideration even towards the weakest, and to teach the ignorant peasantry that while all wrong-doing should be punished, the punishment must be inflicted calmly and legally, not by lynch law or the wild justice of revenge. As Menabrea puts it, man was taught to say to the vilest insects: "You are creatures of God; I respect you. The earth has been given to you as well as to me. I am willing

that you should live. But you harm me; you trespass upon my heritage; you destroy my vineyard; you devour my harvest; you deprive me of the fruit of my labors. Peradventure I have deserved all this, for I am but a miserable sinner. In any case, might it not right. I will show you your errors, I will implore the divine mercy, I will give you a place where you may live, but if you still persist I will curse you."

In most cases, however, it is clear that both clergy and people believed in the efficacy of anathemas and excommunications, and the reason for the delay and cautious observations of all the forms of justice was the doubt as to whether these insect plagues came from God or from the devil.

During the period of the "witch mania," these proceedings against animals assumed a more tragic form, and many an unfortunate woman was burnt alive on the accusation of having, by the aid of the devil, produced a plague of flies or caterpillars.

Nor are such proceedings confined to the Middle Ages. The minutes of the meeting of the municipal council of Thonon in Savoy on November 15, 1731, contain the following entry: "Item a été délibéré que la ville se joindra aux paroisses de cette province qui voudront obtenir de Rome une excommunication contre les insectes, et que l'on contribuera aux frais au pro rata."

Perhaps the last instance of a prosecution of animals is one extracted by M. Agnel from the "Nova Floresta" of Manoel Bernardes. The Franciscan friars of the monastery of St. Antony in the Brazilian province of Piedade no Maranhao were much molested by ants, vast multitudes of which devoured their stores, destroyed their furniture, and rendered the very monastery insecure by their minings. All attempts to get rid of them were vain, till a worthy brother, "moved as we may believe, by divine inspiration," advised that they should resort to that spirit of humility which made their seraphic founder call all creatures his brethren, "brother wolf," "sister swallow," etc. Let them bring an action against their sisters the ants before the tribunal of Divine Providence, represented by the bishop.

being appointed to represent the ants. The prosecuting counsel declared that his clients, in conformity with the rules of their order, lived on alms, which they collected with great difficulty, and that the ants (animals whose spirit is totally contrary to the Gospel, and who were therefore abhorred by St. Francis) did nothing but steal from them, and, worse than ordinary thieves, were even trying to ruin and destroy their home. He asked that they should be required to justify these doings, and, failing this, that pestilence and inundations should be invoked to exterminate them. The ants' advocate replied that, since God had given them life, they had a right to maintain it by the instincts bestowed upon them; that they served God by giving men an example of prudence in both temporal and spiritual matters (Proverbs xxx. 25), of charity, peace, and concord, by the way in which they worked together, and of religion and piety, since, according to Pliny, they only among animals bury their dead. Moreover, they worked much harder than did the monks for they often carried burdens larger than themselves. Man, indeed, might be the more honorable creature, but he had offended his Creator, in whose sight he was no better than an ant. Also, ants were the earlier inhabitants of the place, and might therefore justly complain of violent expulsion. Finally, he declared that the earth and the fulness thereof belonged to God and not to the plaintiffs.

the little animals were beheld marching hastily in long dense columns towards the place appointed for them, and the holy friars, relieved from their intolerable oppression, gave thanks to God for so admirable a manifestation of his power and his providence."

E. T. WITHINGTON.

From The Academy.

JEAN INGELOW.

Jean Ingelow (the Jean came from her Scottish mother, and the g in the surname is a soft one) was born in 1820 at Boston, in Lincolnshire. She has made music out of Boston bells; more uniformly than Tennyson does Lincolnshire and the East Coast appear and reappear in her poetry. Her father was a banker, and afterwards moved to Ipswich.

Banking and Evangelicalism have conspicuously run together in certain well-known families; and they did in hers. Almost Quakerlike some of her likings and aversions might be called. She had no sympathy, for instance, with the warnote which nearly every modern poet has awakened. Even Tennyson, for whom she had an intense admiration, had no message for her there; and the younger poets, who took Tommy Atkins for their hero, could never be hers. In all her many poems not one line, not one word, will be found in justification, still less in praise, of war. In "Kismet" the story of a boy's longing for freedom and the sea is given; and somebody once suggested to her that she had helped perhaps to recruit the Navy. This suggestion meant only horror for her, and she gave the verses a careful re-reading, intending, if she thought that interpretation a possible one, to cancel the offending stanza, or, if necessary, the whole poem. She not only hated evil, she loved to do good. Her charities to the poor were unceas

Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings," appeared anonymously in 1850. Then in 1863 came the "Poems by

Jean Ingelow," which never paused till fourteen editions had been sold, and which are selling, but less resolutely, to this day. Her fame was made in a month. She was set to music, she was recited, she was parodied by Calverley, and brought out in an illustrated édition de luxe. From Boston, not indeed in Lincolnshire, but in New England, she had hundreds of letters and two newspaper notices to tell her that in America, even more quickly than in England, she had made her mark on contemporary sentiment. James Russell Lowell and Oliver Wendell Holmes were her admirers. Even Tennyson was generous in his encomiums. Mr. Ruskin, whose praise has always been precious to women, was at her feet. So that the critic and the casual reader for once agreed together in their appreciation. Or this quick and keen popularity there has been some failure, no doubt, in later days. Her "Story of Doom, and Other Poems," had a welcome only second to its predecessor; but the third series of "Poems" had to make its way among a crowd of new competitors. Time, however, will always right the slight injustice of reaction; and even at this hour there is a sort of remorse of reconsideration among those who have left Miss Ingelow's poems neglected on their shelves these last ten or twenty years. Their old beauty comes as a new surprise. Never hungry for fame, she did not mourn over any signs of its decline.

She did a vast amount of prosewritings in the seventies-"Off the Skelligs," "Fated to be Free," "Don John," and "Sarah de Berenger." Other books of hers were: "Stories Told to a Child," "Studies for Stories," and "Mopsa the Fairy." She wrote with great facility; and she did not alter or polish much in either prose or verse. Though influenced in style by Coleridge, by Tennyson, by Wordsworth, she had her own definite note, distinguishable by its simple freshness. She thought she was meant to be "more original than the creature afterwards become;" but that saying she applied, we imagine, to her life more than to her literature. Among her intimate friends was Mr. Mundella, who survived her only one day.

Very conventional were her surroundings when, after her mother's death, she moved from Holland Street to Holland Villas Road, Kensington. The little house had a little garden; and, perhaps, the greatest excitement in her later life was a garden-party of her own giving. One of the last appearances of Mr. Locker-Lampson was in that very garden one summer afternoon; and in that guest and hostess have passed away types that are rapidly becoming extinct, delightful in old-world courtesy, indulgent to the errors of days gone by, if a little impatient to the moods of a generation younger than their

own.

In accounting for the great popularity obtained by Miss Ingelow, one has only to remember how often and how well she sang of the sea: not the sea on which our warships and our mercantile navies ride gloriously, but the sea we have known best in childhood, on which the herring fleet puts forth in the evening. We think, indeed, that Miss Ingelow will be longest remembered as the fisherman's poet. No poet has been more haunted by the roar of winter seas beneath the cliffs on which the lights of the fishing village flit and flicker. No poet has so persistently sung the dirges of those whom the sea has claimed. Take the verses from the "Requiescat in Pace:"

It was three months and over since the lad had started:

On the green downs at Cromer I sat to see the view;

On an open space of herbage, where the ling and fern had parted,

Betwixt the tall white lighthouse towers, the old and the new.

Below me lay the wide sea, the scarlet sun was stooping,

And he dyed the waste water, as with a scarlet dye;

And he dyed the lighthouse towers; every bird with white wing swooping Took his colors, and the cliffs did, and the yawning sky.

Oyer grass came that strange flush, and over ling and heather,

Over flocks and sheep and lambs, and over the Cromer town;

From Knowledge.

THE SWIFT'S NIGHT-FLIGHT. During June and July, dwellers in places where the swift abounds may investigate its recently discovered habit of soaring upward at evening and (apparently) spending the night in the sky. This interesting incident may be observed in June more easily than in July, because the evening sky is clearer in the former month than in the latter. It was just ten years ago that observers in England first noticed this extraordinary behavior on the part of a diurnal British bird; and during that cloudless Jubilee June three persons were watching, night after night, the soaring swifts.

One of these observers was Mr. Aubrey Edwards, son of the vicar of Orleton, R. S. O., Herefordshire, who from often saw the swifts Orleton Church depart upward at night; and he, with his father and brother, remained in the churchyard until 10.30, or even 11 o'clock, watching for the birds, which did not return. There were about forty of these ascending swifts, which Mr. Edwards justifiably conceived to be males; and other swifts remained in the nests.

In the

same month Mr. Douglas Brodie, of Croydon, was making similar observations on the colony of swifts which lived under the eaves of the houses in the centre of that town-as appears from his reply to a query of the writer at a later date. "A certain number of the colony, after the rest have gone to roost, go soaring up in circles with a peculiar quivering of the wings, till they go clean out of sight. With field-glasses I have seen them nearly a minute longer."

On the 10th of June, 1887, the writer was watching a large flock of swifts from a garden halfway up Stroud Hill, in Gloucestershire. The air was very clear, and the swifts whirled across and across the sky. The sun had set, but the birds did not descend. They finally went right up out of sight. On the 21st the swifts at Stroud exhibited