CURRENT LITERATURE.
Our Poor Relations: a Philozoic Essay. By Colonel E. B. Hamley. (Blackwood and Son.)—This is a charming little book, such as may be read through in half an hour ; nor would it be easy to spend half an hour more pleasantly, or indeed to more profit. Slowly, very slowly indeed, but still by a sure progress, we are straggling out of the merely selfish and masterful view of the relations between ourselves and the lower animals ; and Colonel Hanaley's essay, with its wide, kindly sympathies and delicate fancy, will help it on. He is never savage except with those savages the vivisectors, and one or two of the more brutal " naturalists ;" his reproofs are administered in a quietly humorous fashion, but there are few of us who will not feel a touch of shame here and there, as we read, and resolve, it must be hoped, to be more thoughtful and tender with the dumb things that look up to us as their lords. We should like our readers to have a specimen of Colonel Hamley's manner; they can hardly fail to wish for more :— " What a descriptive poem must the Eagle have in him, who, sailing in ether, miles beyond our ken, sees earth beneath him as a map, and through gaps in the clouds catches blue glimpses of the ocean and yellow gleams of the desert! Often, while resting on his great pennons in the serene blue, has he seen a thunderstorm unroll its pageant beneath him, and watched the jagged lightning as it darted earthward. (Tom Camp- bell was once taken up by an eagle near Oran, and, coming safely down, described what he had seen in immortal verse.) Those hermit birds which live by lonely streams in wild valleys, like the Ousel and the Kingfisher, mast be full of delicate fancies—fancies very different from those, which must be very delicate also, that visit the nomads of the air, such as the Swallow, the Cuckoo, and the Quail, with their large ex- perience of countries, and climes, and seas. How delicious, how ever fresh, how close to nature, the life of a Sea-fowl whose home is in some cliff fronting the dawn, and who, dwelling always there, yet sees infinite variety in the ever-changing sky and sea—flapping leisurely over the gentle ripples in the morning breeze—alighting in the depths which mirror the evening sky so placidly as to break into circles round the dip of his wing—piercing, like a ray, the silver haze of the rain-cloud—lost in the dusky bosom of the squall—blown about like a leaf on the storm which strews the shore with wrecks—and, next day, rising and falling in the sunshine on the curves of the swell."
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