The menageries : quadrupeds, described and drawn from living subjects.

Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The menageries : quadrupeds, described and drawn from living subjects. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    upon his knees, with a profound inclination of his head, when he first saw the Pope *. The veneration of the elephant for persons in authority has descended to those of secondary dignity; for Cardan saw the one belonging to the Queen of Bohemia, which was also very sagacious in other respects, welcome an archbishop of Milan, upon his bended knees. Such homage as this, however agreeable it may be to human pride, is as worthless as that which Augustus received upon his triumphal entry into Rome, after the battle of Actium, when the parrots from the windows cried out “ Honour and victory to Caesar.” The con- queror gave enormous prices for these sagacious birds; but one bird, unluckily forgetting his last lesson, repeated that which he had been taught when the success of Augustus over his great rival was not so sure—“ Honour and victory to Antony the Em- perort”—and then Augustus grew tired of his winged flatterers, as he called them,—perhaps with- out making the discovery that all flatterers are equally contemptible. The exhibition of the elephant at the Adelphi Theatre, however it may have been exceeded by the feats of the elephants of antiquity, was exceedingly curious and instructive. The animal took part in the scene with almost undeviating precision; displayed no want of confidence or self-possession in the midst of lights, and music, and the shouts of the people ; and made her parting salute with as much grace as if she had Emperors and Popes only to bow to. One of the most curious scenes in which she took a prominent part, was that in which she assisted the escape of the Prince and his adherents from prison, by kneeling upon her hind legs, and thus forming an * Osorius de Gestis Emanuelis Regis,—cited in Sallengre. t Budaeus de Asse, cited in Le Gendre, Traite de l’Opinion, vol. ii. VOL. II. C
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