States of America. These illustrious men are highly coloured in fighting
trim and fighting attitude. To suggest the pastoral and meditative
nature of their peaceful calling, Mr. Heenan is represented on emerald
sward, with primroses and other modest flowers springing up under the
heels of his half-boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled to the
administration of his favourite blow, the Auctioneer, by the silent
eloquence of a village church. The humble homes of England, with their
domestic virtues and honeysuckle porches, urge both heroes to go in and
win; and the lark and other singing birds are observable in the upper
air, ecstatically carolling their thanks to Heaven for a fight. On the
whole, the associations entwined with the pugilistic art by this artist
are much in the manner of Izaak Walton.

But it is with the lower animals of back streets and by-ways that my
present purpose rests. For human notes we may return to such
neighbourhoods when leisure and opportunity serve.

Nothing in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my mind more than the bad
company birds keep. Foreign birds often get into good society, but
British birds are inseparable from low associates. There is a whole
street of them in St. Giles's; and I always find them in poor and
immoral neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house and the
pawnbroker's. They seem to lead people into drinking, and even the man
who makes their cages usually gets into a chronic state of black eye.
Why is this? Also, they will do things for people in short-skirted
velveteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats and fur
caps, which they cannot be persuaded by the respectable orders of
society to undertake. In a dirty court in Spitalfields, once, I found a
goldfinch drawing his own water, and drawing as much of it as if he were
in a consuming fever. That goldfinch lived at a bird-shop, and offered,