The cut-worm is here correctly defined as the enemy, while the excise claimed by the birds is head-money for his extirpation. An adaptation of this instructive couplet to gardening for the guidance of those of us who do not farm, but garden in a small way, would naturally enlarge the allowance of the cut-worm. From the more limited demesne the crow and the grakle are generally excluded. What is their loss is the cut-worm's gain. Nowhere does he run (or burrow) riot more successfully than in old gardens. Living in darkness, from an apparent consciousness that his deeds are evil, he seems to be fully advised of all that goes on above ground. One would fancy that he has a complete system of subterranean telegraphs, like those coming into vogue in Europe. He learns within a few hours or minutes of every new lot of plants sprouting from the seed or set out from the hotbed. Upon both he sets systematically to work, following his row with a precision and thoroughness at once admirable and exasperating. You go out of a May afternoon, and with the tenderest care establish in their summer homes your very choicest plants. Reverse "One counted them at break of day, and when the sun set where were they?" and the tale that greets you the next morning is told. Did the spoiler need them for food, you would be partly reconciled to his proceedings, or at least would know how to frame some sort of an excuse for them. But he merely divides the succulent stem close to the surface of the ground, above or below, and leaves the wreck unutilized even by him. A comfort is that flight is not his forte. He is generally to be found by the exploring penknife or trowel close by the scene of his crime, and is thus easily subjected to condign punishment. But his wife, family and friends survive in different spots of the adjacent underworld, to give evidence of their existence only in subsequent havoc. The titillative rake or the peremptory hoe does not help you much in their discovery; for their color is that of the soil, their size as various as that of bits of gravel, and they are not easily perceptible to a cursory glance from the ordinary height of the eye. Here is where keener optics than yours, sharpened perhaps by a keener impulse—that of the stomach—come to the rescue. The catbird, whose[page 257] imploring mew you listened to from your bed some time before thinking proper to respond to it, is intently watching operations from the other end of the border or the square. His lusty youngsters have been trained, after the good old fashion, to early hours, and they are impatient for breakfast. Their parent sees what you do not, and astonishes you by suddenly pouncing upon a bit of earth you have just broken and seizing a stout worm. This stranger, if presentable to the family circle, he is at once off with, his spouse taking his place in the field. Or the youngsters may still be in futuro. All the same: whatever turns up is welcome to him. His appetite seems as insatiable as that of half a dozen nestlings: they, you know, will eat three or four times their own weight in twelve hours. He is thus immensely useful to you, but your appreciation of that fact is as nothing to his estimate of your value to him. He accepts you as a being sent for his benefit. You are a part of his scheme of providence. True, he pities while he rejoices over you. Your blindness and stupidity in not seeing the fat and luscious tidbits he snaps up from almost beneath your feet is of course a subject of wonder and disdain. But he learns to make allowances for you, and comes to view your failings charitably, especially as they enure to his benefit, and so lean to Virtue's side. Fear of you he has none. Indeed, you inspire in him a certain sense of protection, for in your presence his habitual vigilance is lulled, and his apprehensive glances over his right and left shoulders fall to a lower figure per minute. He has learned there to feel safe from hawk and cat, and knows enough of other birds to be sure that none of them will "jump" his little claim of fifty feet square whereof you are the moving centre. His individual audacity gives him the sway of that small empire, and he doubts not that you will support him in acting up to the motto of the Iron Crown of the Lombards. His cousin the robin may, and very probably does, hover on the outskirts, but an exact distance measures the comparative boldness and familiarity of the two species. The catbird is, say, ten yards more companionable than his red-vested relative in the latter's most genial and trustful mood; and his faith is of a more robust type and less easily and permanently weakened by rebuffs. The robin rarely hovers round you, but likes to have the whole premises quietly to himself. His attachment does not take a personal hue, but is rather to locality. His acquaintanceship with you is never so intimate as that of the catbird, who soon recognizes your step, your dress and the peculiar touch and cadence of your hoe, even as a college oarsman will identify the stroke of a chum or a rival a quarter of a mile off. If the robin does fix your individuality in his mind, he deigns to make no sign thereof. At most he accepts you as part of the mechanism of creation. You make no draft upon his bump of reverence. He does not set you on his Olympus. This mark of the spirit which makes him, on the whole, a more respectable and dignified character than his less gayly-dressed cousin tends in some sense to commend him the less to you, since we all like the homage of the "inferior animals," birds or voters. You half dislike the independence of the robin, who is equally at home in the parterre or the forest, on the gravel-walk or in the upper air. On the other you have more hold. He is rarely seen higher than twenty feet above ground, and is strictly an appendage of the shrubbery and the orchard. Even in his unhappy voice there is a domestic tone, closely imitated as it is from Grimalkin. Imitated, we say, for we have never been able fully to believe that this mew is the bird's original note. We shall ever incline to the impression that it is an acquired dialect, picked up in the mere wantonness born of a conscious and exceptional power of mimicry.
E. C. B.
A NEW AND INDIGNANT ITALIAN POET.
Mrs. Leo Hunter's selection of an "Expiring Frog" as a subject for poetical composition has lately been surpassed by a new Italian poet. The latter, Signer Giovanni Rizzi, has just published at Milan a small volume of sonnets, chiefly ironical in character, in which he[page 258] gives vent to his disgust at the positive and materialistic tendencies of the present day. The theme of the three most remarkable among these productions is that useful but not very æsthetic animal, the hog.
Signer Rizzi is the professor of literature at the military school and the high school for girls in Milan. Not long ago his three sonnets to the hog—or, more literally, the boar (maiale)—appeared in an Italian journal called Illustrazione Italiana, prefaced by a letter to the editor, in which the author stated that as apes, toads and caterpillars have now been triumphantly introduced into literature, he no longer felt any hesitation about bringing forward in the same way his esteemed friend the boar. These three pieces, together with others of the same form and character, have now been published as a book under the title of Un Grido. This work begins with an address to the reader, in which the poet laments the prevailing tendency of public opinion, and protests against what he considers a determined war on all old and honored beliefs and feelings, and a substitution therefor of a vague and revolting materialism. Then come five sonnets to Pietro Aretino, the witty poet and scoffer of the Renaissance era. Aretino is invited to reappear among men, for the world, says Rizzi, has again become worthy of such a man's presence. Leaving Dante to Jesuits, and Beatrice to priests, it has made Aretino its favorite model, and has, consequently, said farewell to everything resembling shame. In the last of these five sonnets the poet addresses his beloved thus: "And we too, O Love! do we still keep holy honor, home, faith, prayer, truth and noble sorrow?"
After the five sonnets to Aretino come the three to the boar (Al Maiale) which have already been mentioned. Here the author enters into a mock glorification of that animal, and declares himself ready to give up all pretensions to any superiority over it. He proceeds to "swear eternal friendship" with it, and offers it his hand to solemnize the compact; but, suddenly remembering that such old-fashioned practices must be very distasteful to his new friend, he immediately apologizes for having conformed to such a ridiculous old prejudice. He does not expect his "long-lost brother" to make any effort to elevate himself or to change his swinish nature in any particular, but thinks we should all bring ourselves down to the boar's mental and physical level as soon as we can. The closing verses of the third sonnet may be freely rendered as follows:
And when, at last, the grave shall close above us,
No solemn prayer our resting-place should hallow,
No flowers be strewn by hands of those that love us.