A chase, even more dangerous than that of the lion itself, is that which is sometimes directed by the Arabs against its cubs. Every day it is customary for the lion and the lioness to leave their den, towards three or four o'clock in the afternoon, for the purpose of reconnoitring the neighbourhood, with the view, no doubt, of procuring food for their young ones. They are seen upon the neighbouring heights, gazing all around, and particularly taking notice of the situation of the flocks in the vicinity, giving utterance the while to the most horrible of roars. It is during these absences that it is necessary for the cub-hunter to glide adroitly into their den, taking great care to gag them with despatch, since their faintest cry would immediately call their parents to their assistance. If the hunter should succeed in taking or destroying a nest of cubs, it becomes then the duty of the whole country round to redouble its precautions and its vigilance; for during seven or eight days the lion and lioness prowl about with ten times their usual audacity, and howling in a manner ten times more frightful than is their wont.

The flesh of the lion, which the Arabs some

times eat, is not good, but its skin forms the most valuable of presents, and is only given to sultans, renowned and illustrious chiefs, marabouts, and raouyas. The Arabs believe that it is good to sleep upon a lion's skin, fancying that they thereby prevent the approach of demons, conjure away misfortune, and preserve themselves from various maladies. The claws of the lion, mounted in gold, are favourite ornaments with the women. The skin of its forehead is esteemed by the men as a talisman, which, if worn upon their heads, will serve to keep them bold, brave, and audacious.

A popular African belief shows the grandeur of the role which the lion plays in the imagination of the Arabs. When the lion roars, they pretend they can distinguish these five words:"Ahna ou ben el mera;" which, being translated, signify, "Me and the Son of woman;" and they assert that the lion thus recognises the existence of no other creature than man besides itself.

The life of the hunter, it will be gathered from these few episodes, is a life of peril and adventure, of ardent courses in the desert, and bold and audacious excursions among woods and mountains.

It is a proposition generally received as an axiom, but nevertheless one very difficult to prove, that a high state of civilisation is invariably associated with the greatest refinement in habit and manner. Almost every schoolboy knows that Ovid said,

"Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes

Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros ;"

but if the lad were required to prove the truth of the poet's lines by reference to the customs of the Roman people when Ovid lived, he would find himself utterly at a loss to do so. We need not, however, go back either to Greck or Roman history, even at its culminating point of national grandeur, to refute the argument; our own time is not without evidence of the existence of practices that stand as condemnatory witnesses against it;-the bull-fights of Spain are not yet among the things of the past, and we could come nearer home than these. The fact is, that influences of a nobler and holier character than any which science, literature, and the liberal arts can communicate, are necessary to produce such moral refinement in

a people as will free them from the charge of semi-barbarism, though surrounded by all the elements of a luxurious taste, and in the enjoyment of all that wealth can purchase, and the ingenuity of man can create.

Every country has had, and still has, its peculiar sports which, from the universal interest the people feel in them, are justly termed "national;" the Olympia of the Greeks, the gladiatorial combats of the Romans, the tournaments of European chivalry in the middle ages, the war-dance of the New Zealand savage, and the elephant fights of India, though dissimilar in character, may each and all be classed under this head: rich and poor were alike interested in them, as actors or spectators. We do not include among these "sports" what may more properly be called "games," or rational diversions and exercises, having a tendency to invigorate the animal constitution, without brutalising the mind, by inuring it to deeds of violence and cruelty. Time, education, and a higher tone of moral feeling, have happily thrust aside those sanguinary exhibitions that were a disgrace to humanity, except in some

few places which the voice of public opinion has not yet reached, or, if heard, has not been attended to. It is not more than a month or two since thousands of people, of all grades and conditions, assembled at New Orleans to witness a terrific combat between a bull and a bear; but the matter called forth such strong animadversion on the part of the American journalists, that it is not likely to be soon repeated.

Considering the talent with which every artist is endowed, as a gift imparted to him by the Creator for the gratification and instruction of the creature, we deprecate its application to subjects in themselves of a painful or demoralising nature; the only excuse to be made for such representations is, that they serve the purposes of history, by illustrating events which the historian or the traveller describes, and which are worthy of being recorded, from their interest universally, or as exemplifications of national manners. It was for the latter reason, it may justly be presumed, and not from any pictorial beauty incidental to the scene, that Daniell was induced to paint a picture of an elephant fight he witnessed at Lucknow, during his long sojourn in India. Lucknow is the capital of the Kingdom of Oude; it is a large and populous city, about six hundred and fifty miles from Calcutta, built in a purely Oriental style. The artist, in a narrative of his travels he published, has given a graphic description of the combat, but we do not think our readers would care to peruse details which reflect no honour on humanity: there is no doubt of his picture being a faithful representation of this singular Eastern tournament.

The elephant has long been made the companion of the Orientalist in his great hunting parties, and has also served to minister to the

cruel amusements of the native princes, by being urged to combat with other species of animals, as well as their own. There is no more remarkable instance of the truth of the promise that man should hold dominion over the beasts of the field, than the fact of his subjecting these leviathans of the forest to his power, training them to the useful offices of animals of draught and burden, leading them to swell the pomp of his pageants, and marshalling them in warlike ranks against his enemies. During the war with Tippoo Saib, which ended in his death and the loss of his kingdom, there was an elephant brigade employed by the English commanders, which numbered one hundred and fifty of these gigantic beasts. Darius brought elephants into the field against the Macedonian phalanxes of Alexander, and Pyrrhus of Epirus scattered the Roman cohorts by similar allies.

The Asiatic clephant is by far the largest of its species, but even its height has been very much exaggerated, few of them ever reaching ten fect, measured from the shoulders, though the Madras elephants have been said to average from seventeen to twenty feet. The sagacity of the elephant amounts to a proverb-in fact is generally thought to exceed that of all animals. Yet the distinguished naturalist, Cuvier, remarks, that after a long and patient study of its character, he never found its intelligence surpass that of a dog, or many other carnivorous animals. Perhaps, after all, and notwithstanding the numerous well-authenticated anecdotes related of them, our wonder is excited more by the circumstance that a creature of such huge dimensions, and whose form and general appearance indicate heaviness and obtuseness, should have any acute perception, than by the extraordinary uses which the animal has sometimes made of it.

THE Eternal City is eternally uncomfortable, and at her wits' end about something or other: she has ousted the Republicans, and finds herself not one whit the more free; nay, she has two powers to contend with now, instead of one-France on one side, and Austria on the other she is compelled to make grimaces of civility to both, all the time in a fright lest either should see the double game she is playing. She has decimated her children, yet she finds her prisons insufficient to contain the

crowds that she is taught by her money-hunting police to believe undutiful and disaffected. She has doubled her taxations, crippling all ranks, save the cardinals and priests-in the endeavour to pay them, for beyond the endeavour few can go; yet she sees her coffers empty. To be sure, the coffers of those who are entrusted with the administration of the finances are thriving enough, but then, she has been accustomed to consider private misery and public peculation as things not wholly in

compatible. Everything, however, may go too far. Signor Galli himself has gone too farthe shiftings in the value of the paper money, the obstacles thrown in the way of reforming the currency, the enormous purchases of land by the cardinals and other dutiful sons of the Church, to say nothing of those whom espionnage, and worse, have enabled to become, from the very dregs of the people, proprietors of the estates of honourable men whom they have betrayed-all have gone too far! One thing is evident-the state wants money, and money it must have. From coercive measures there is nothing more to be expected; some others, therefore, must be found, which, by appealing to the passions or the follies of the people, may supply the desired ends: from their ignorance not much is to be longer hoped for. The march of intellect, though slow, in countries under Papal sway, has yet, step by step, interfered with the sale of indulgences, reliques, and absolutions. It was necessary, therefore, to devise something that might wear the air of a voluntary contribution; accordingly, the happy idea was hit upon of a MONSTER LOTTERY. NOW it must be owned that in the human breast, from the prince to the beggar, a desire of gain, by accident or chance, is universal; whether in the one it takes the outward form of rougeet-noir, hazard, billiards, or speculations at the Bourse or the stock-exchange, or in the other it descends to "odd or even," "heads or tails," "chuck farthing," or the classic game of morrah-supposed to have been originally invented by the

"Woman-warrior, with the curling hair,"

Paris, to divert the ennui, perhaps the remorse, of the beauteous Helen, during the tedious siege of Troy, by employing her ivory fingers in alternate opening and shutting, whilst he guessed the number it pleased her to display or to conceal; and which now forms the delight of the lower class of Romans, whose stentorian voices may be heard in the blue moonlight nights, shouting forth round the fountains of Trevi, or the Piazza di Spagna, "tre," "otte," "cinque," and so on, throughout every combination of the digits, with a perseverance and force that is said to frequently wear out their lungs prematurely, and send them to an carly grave.

We are sorry to have to confess that there are few governments in civilised society that have not, as they progressed in the course of refinement towards luxury and its increasing requirements, taken advantage of this desire in mankind to reap where they have not sown,

VOL. II. N. S.

to turn it to profit by various lures held out in the shape of gain, without its legitimate price of labour. Of all these lures none, though comparatively of modern date, have been found more eagerly snatched at than those in the shape of lotteries: at first they begun with gratuitous favours-gifts were showered by the caprice of the wealthy upon those whose flattery they hoped to secure in return. Gradually, conditions were annexed to these gifts; then a price put upon the chance of obtaining them, which price it was taken care should be moderate enough not to exclude even the humblest classes from some small participation in the possibility of obtaining a share in the advantages proposed; whilst the prizes were sufficiently important to awaken the cupidity even of the rich, though hedged round with a number of blanks, which no one took the trouble to calculate, or thanked those who officiously undertook to do so for them, but which the contractors well knew secured to themselves a certain and large profit.

Lotteries appear to have originated in Rome: at least we have no earlier records of them than those afforded us by Xiphilinus, who tells us that in the time of Augustus tickets were thrown, by command of the Emperor, among the audiences at the theatre, entitling those who where fortunate enough to catch them to receive such articles as might be specified upon these misilia, as they were styled. The custom was continued by succeeding emperors, and Vespasian, though, from his habitual parsimony, sorely regretting the necessity of complying with it, yet redeemed, in some measure, the comparative meanness of his gifts, by allowing them, such as they were, to be shared in by the gentler sex; as before this time the benefits of them had been confined exclusively to men. The frugality of this emperor was, however, more respectable in itself, and more really respected by the people, than was the insane, and often contemptuous prodigality of Heliogabalus, who, like all tyrants, insulted the people at the moment he pretended to gratify them. Chariots, steeds, equipages, mules, camels, oxen, jewels, and countless treasures, formed the prizes of some, whilst others were mocked by having assigned to them articles of the most worthless or insulting description; thus, to one, ten camels; to another ten flies; to one, ten pounds of gold; to another of lead; to this ten bears, to that ten dormice; even dead dogs were classed among the prizes; but it isrevol ting to follow the decadence of a great nation hastening its own destruction by allowing the vices of its rulers.

BB

The first lottery in England, that is to say, the first by which we understand the purchase of tickets for the chance of gain, being "holden," as Stow tells us, "in Paul's Church-yard, at the west doore, was begun to be drawne on the 11th of January (1569), and continued night and day till the 6th of May, wherein the sayde drawing was fully ended." It was by the command of Queen Elizabeth, and was professed to be instituted "for the restoration of the havens, and strengthening of the realme, and towards such publique good workes." The number of tickets was four hundred thousand, the highest prize five thousand pounds, the lowest two shillings and sixpence. From that time lotteries continued to be organised in England upon a variety of pretences and a variety of plans; even the British Museum owes the means of providing for it in its infancy to a lottery. At length, the whole system became nothing more than an immense national gambling establishment of the most pernicious description; and, after eighteen. years' unwearied representations and exhortations from intelligent and conscientious persons, commissioned for the purpose, who gave their time and talents to the setting forth of its evil effects upon the people, and the little real pecuniary benefit that accrued from it to the Government-the annual profit being only calculated at £200,000—it was finally abolished on the 18th of October, 1826, which day beheld the last drawing of the national lottery in England. In France the evil continued to a ruinous extent, absorbing the time, intellect, and money of thousands who passed their lives in alternate careful scrutiny of the lists regularly published, year after year, for the benefit of succeeding generations, of the numbers that had been drawn, and anxious calculations as to those which were consequently most likely to come out next. Some combinations, indeed, had never yet been called forth; and in proportion to the tenacity with which they seemed to keep in retreat, was the sanguineness of the hope that backed them, time after time, only to encounter fresh disappointments. How many comedies, or rather, alas! how many tragedies, might the history of lotteries furnish? In Italy, more especially, the lottery becomes an absolute mania; in Florence and Rome it is drawn every fortnight; at Naples three times in each month; and the extraordinary scenes, the gesticulations, the caperings, the howlings to which it gives rise in a climate so exciting, and among a people so impressionable, must have been witnessed in order to be fully believed. It is drawn

in the Palace of Justice, under the immediate patronage of St. Pantaleone the Great and St. Januarius; but it should seem that among all the miracles they can perform for the edification of the faithful, that of ensuring prizes is not among the number; and poor St. Januarius, in particular, is often greeted with as many reproaches and outcries by his disappointed clients, as he hears from his female relatives, a set of frightful old women who claim the honour of being of the same lineage, when he is more tardy than usual in the agreeable and instructive operation of liquefying his own blood.

To set against this liberty of speech, however, on the part of the unsuccessful, the more fortunate ones rarely fail to evince their gratitude by offering up a wax-candle, or saying an extra mass at the shrine of the saint to whose friendly offices they may be willing to attribute their good luck. Indeed, if they were inclined to forget their duty on such occasions, they would find some difficulty in doing so; as the priests keep a very sharp look out after the prize-holders, and lose very little time in awakening their consciences as to the propriety of settling their spiritual claims before they think of anything else. A curious instance of this kind occurred at Rome, within our own immediate knowledge:-A poor widow, who had been left in the greatest poverty by the death of her husband, dreamt of him shortly after the event had taken place : as soon as she rose, she consulted the Book of Fate, the grand Lottery Oracle to which all ranks apply on similar occasions.

She found that her dream responded to certain lucky numbers; she managed to raise a few baiocchi, or half-pence, by the means, too familiar to the poor, of putting some of her clothes in pledge, and procured the three numbers specified, on which she, to use the technical expression, "played for the terne." All the three came up, and her baiocchi were returned to her in the form of one hundred and eighty scudi, a sum which, properly managed, might, at Rome, have been so invested as to have secured her a comfortable maintenance for life. She flew to her confessor, to tell him of her good fortune; he congratulated her upon it with all becoming cordiality, but recollecting himself the moment after, he said to her, "You must not imagine this money is intended for yourself; it was your husband that was the means of your getting it, and he appeared to you in your sleep, in order that, when gained, you might apply it to release him from purgatory, where, in fact, I know he is, at this time, suffering dreadful torments."