BOOKS.

THE JOURNAL OF A YOUNG NATURALIST.' THE narratives of precocious young men and maidens whose fair flower of life fades before it is fully blown, are not generally instructive reading. Our pity and sympathy are demanded too often at the expense of our judgment, and we are asked to admire a premature intellectual development which it would be more rational to deplore. The volume before us is not perhaps open to these objections, and the long period that has elapsed since it was written may be some excuse, if not a sufficient one, for the publication of a private journal.

Emily Shore was born in 1819, and died of consumption in Madeira in 1839. Her father was the Rev. Thomas Shore, of Wadham College, Oxford, who for a long course of years maintained his family by "preparing for college five or six young men, many of whom were of a high social position and became known in the political world." He was a first-cousin of Lord Teignmouth, and also of the poet Praed, and from him as well as from her mother, Emily Shore gained all the education that was not self-acquired. Open to every girlish impression and enjoyment, her powers of acquisition and ardour in the pursuit of knowledge were combined with shrewd sense, a passionate love of Nature, and an affectionate disposition. The Journal from which this selection is taken consists of twelve octavo volumes, daintily written in a printing band, of which a specimen page is given, and written, we are told, "impromptu, without a rough draft, in the midst of as busy a life as ever young creature led." The entries begin with her twelfth year, and end a fortnight before her death. In the .earliest pages, the child writes with much propriety of expression, and apparently without effort. She relates what she sees and what she thinks in simple language ; but although a child, she is not childish, and it is strange to find the little maiden of eleven• giving her reasons, and sound reasons too, for not admiring a picture of Richard West's, and observing that Morland rather fails in his trees, and that " the shading of his barns and sheds. is sometimes a large, unmeaningless mass of heavy strokes." Already she began to try her skill with the pencil, and illus- trated a History of the Jews which she had written with the help of the Bible and of Milman. A year later, she read Spen- ser's Hymns of "Heavenly Love " and of "Heavenly Beauty,' • Journal of Emily Shore. London : Regan Paul and Co. 1891.

and thought them perhaps equal to anything Milton ever wrote. That poems so lofty and contemplative in tone, which express, as it has been justly said, " a rapture of Platonic enthusiasm," should have attracted a young girl, is a re- markable illustration of early development. She never lost her love for them, and a year before her death wrote of the " Hymn of Heavenly Love " as her favourite poem. Even at this childish age, her observation of natural objects, and especially of birds, was that of a born naturalist. The pursuit, which led her into the woods at early dawn, is said to have been a probable cause of the lung-disease that destroyed her eager life.

At thirteen she was studying botany, Latin, and Greek, and teaching Greek to the younger children. She was also the story-teller of the family, and had been so from the age of six or seven. To write an epic poem in several books, and a poem in the manner of Sir Walter Scott, was another of the child's diversions. She was also interested in astronomy, and describes with great intelligence the information gained from a well-known astronomer who visited her father's house. It is pleasant to read upon the next page that Emily ran races with her brother, and was the winner in two of them.

It is impossible to say how far the young girl's criticisms on art and literature are due to the opinions expressed in her hearing—she relates that she found the conversation in the drawing-room very interesting—but no doubt of this kind attaches to her remarks on birds and insects, and on the aspects of Nature. At fourteen, the young naturalist knew the notes of nearly all the English songsters, and her Journal shows how carefully she studied their ways. Thus, for instance, she writes upon a September morning :—

" I was awake at a quarter past four, before sunrise, and amused myself for an hour in watching the proceedings of the birds. It was dim twilight at this time, and the whole sky was of a cold blue-grey, except where, in the east, there was a very faint flush of pink, which became gradually brighter and brighter, till it was a fiery crimson, and the whole east was tinged with a burning gold. When I got up the cock was crowing, and at half-past four the little early robin was awake, though it still almost dark, crying trrr-rrr,' and in a short time he was singing sweetly. Then came the blackbirds at twenty minutes to five. All I saw were hens. Five minutes after a rook was flying over the paddock. At about five o'clock a thrush was sitting in the mulberry-tree, and then a tomtit began his little whispering note and a flycatcher his peek-peek.' At a quarter past five a swallow was singing. I saw no chaffinches ; I suspect them to be very lazy."

A little later there is this passage, remarkable, to our thinking, for its loving note of observation in so young a child :—

" In the still noon of a sultry September day (such a September as we have had this year), when not a leaf is stirring, and almost every bird has retired from sight into the shadiest thickets, the appearance of the little solitary golden-crested wren, the only creature moving, seems to add singularly to the idea of quiet and silence. Its movements are unlike those of any other bird, except, indeed, the tomtit ; but even this bird does not equal the lightness and airiness of the little wren. It flutters over the tenderest twigs and sprays like a butterfly, and quivers its tiny wings without the least sound, so that unless you see it, you would not be aware of its presence. It is hardly like a bird ; even the little chirp that it occasionally emits bears more resemblance to that of an insect."

Here is another entry, written in Emily Shore's seventeenth year, from her home in the New Forest :— " Being unable to walk, I sat out-of-doors for an hour or two in the afternoon, in a little sheltered spot in front of the house It was a calm, delicious day, the forest bathed in sunlight, the sky a pure pale-blue. On my left, close to the wall of the house, is an oak grey with lichens ; here I watched the merry ox-eyes flitting from twig to twig and tapping them with head downwards ; and the handsome nuthatch, with his loud, clear whistle, running up the boughs like a mouse, and hammering at them with all the concentrated force of his powerful body. In the herbage of the park, I heard the mingled tinkling warble of a dozen goldfinches ; the sweet song of the robin sounded from tree to tree. From the forest arose a few melodious notes of the thrush, and the loud laugh of the green woodpecker. A pied wagtail, with his cheerful

• chippeet,' alighted on the roof of the house above me ; a lark flew across the park uttering his pretty, plaintive cry. In the garden, the scream of the jay and the chattering of jackdaws completed the gay, though not always melodious concert."

Passages similar to those we have transcribed are far from uncommon, and now and then there is an anecdote of animal sagacity for the truth of which she is able to vouch. The following is given on her father's authority:— "Papa mentioned a curious circumstance about cats, which he knew of himself, as it happened in his father's house. They had two cats, a male and female, called Chance' and `Chase.' The latter, which was the male, was given away, and sent to a house about two miles off. Soon after, Chance' kittened. The day

after, `Chance' disappeared, leaving her poor kittens to themselves. She was absent three days, daring which papa and his sister pre- served the kittens alive by pouring milk down their throats. In three days the mother returned, with her companion Chase,' to find whom she must have passed through water, to which cats are so averse. It is, besides, a wonder how she could have discovered Chase's' new abode. On her return, she again suckled her- infants, who all lived."

A curious anecdote of a dog is related with more reserve, as the writer "cannot altogether vouch for the truth of it :"—

" A gentleman fond of animals had a pet dog, which his wife, who hated dogs, detested, and banished whenever it entered the drawing-room. One day, as she was sitting there, the dog marched in, and lay down before the fire. The lady turned him out. The dog, supposing that she was afraid of his dirtying the room, brought a duster from the kitchen, deposited it on the rug, and lay down upon it. The brute of a woman ended by having him kicked out. She told it herself to the person from whom our in- formant—Miss Nowell, Mamma's cousin—heard it."

In the pursuit of natural history, the wise little lady of six- teen wrote :—" It is important not to come too hastily to con- clusions, but to study facts from observation frequently and most carefully before any inference is drawn from them ;" and she makes this remark after mistaking the notes of one bird for another.

History and geography were among her favourite studies. She had also a passion for the drama ; but, strange to say.

while reading Massinger and Ford with delight, she appears. to have had some scruple about novels, and on one occasion

debated with her cousins whether they ought to read Ivanhoe. The doubt, however, was but temporary, and the journalist acknowledges having written tales herself. Her story, entitled Devereux, bears; she says, so striking a resemblance to The Adventures of a Younger Son, that were it ever to be published " nobody would believe that it was not a grossly servile imitation."

It is especially painful to note in the Journal the variations of hope and fear, of energy and despondency, that mark the gradual progress of consumption. When suffering much, she foresees the inevitable end, and feels its sadness, since she has "but just quitted childhood." If a change for the better occurs, she looks forward cheerfully and begins fresh studies- "I cannot bear the idea," she writes, "of living, even in sick-

ness, without systematically acquiring knowledge." The anonymous editor says that Emily Shore's ardent piety did not tend much to her happiness, since she could not satisfy the claims which the severe creed she believed in made on her. That Emily Shore felt the seriousness of her state, is evident enough, but the few expressions indicative of her spiritual condition do not convey the impression that her religion made

her more " self-reproachful " than Wordsworth felt when he cried:—

" The best of what we do and are, Just God, forgive ! "

Occasionally, men with familiar names appear in Miss Shore's Journal. • Of Winthrop Mack worth Praed she writes, two. years before his death :—" He is a very clever and very-

agreeable man, as thin as a lath and almost ghastly in

countenance ; his pallid forehead, haggard features, and the quick glances of his bright, blue eyes, are all indications, I fear, of fatal disease. He seems, alas ! sinking into a consump- tion, which his Parliamentary exertions are too likely to hurry forward, if indeed he be not in one already." Here, too, is a glimpse of Blanco White, whom her father met at Oxford._ and describes as" a light-haired, light-complexioned, singularly ugly man, and till he speaks not pleasing, but in conversation

highly agreeable." Pleasant, too, is the account of meeting Mr. Barrett, Mrs. Browning's father, who had known Miss Shore when she was a girl :—" He shook hands with us most cordially, and very much pleased us with his frank, good- natured countenance." The Journal, by-the-way, abounds' with slight incidents that are insignificant apart from the contest; but the writer's sense of humour, her love of Nature and of books, and her fullness of life, even when in the shadow of death, give an interest to the most trivial of these records. It is a pathetic story, and all the more pathetic for the slight love episode that brightens some of the pages.