FIRST PART. "From these, degenerate as they are, I still improve in some virtues without any mixture of vice."-Swift. The THAT interest respecting the animal creation, that desire to alleviate their pains, the sympathy for their sufferings, which during thirty years has so greatly increased, is, there can be no doubt, one of the innumerable shapes in which the Christian faith has softened and humanized the world. fierce passions of beasts have ceased to be a type and example of human virtue. The fierceness of the lion is no longer held up as the exemplar of masculine perfection, and the gentle timidity of the sheep has ceased to be the despised emblem of cowardice and insignificance. HE who was led like a lamb to the slaughter has sanctified the B virtues of meekness and humility; he has taught the world that peace is better than war; that patience surpasses revenge; that there is more honour to forgive than to destroy; and in this, as in every branch of cruelty and crime, the very wicked, who reject the truth, have bent unwillingly beneath its effects; the power which they deny, they cannot withstand; and by an influence, gradual but irresistible, vice has unwillingly resigned a hundred shapes of horror. When red hot pincers tore the flesh of the assassin, and molten lead and boiling oil were the only unguents to his wounds; when the entrails of the disembowelled traitor quivered apart from the live and agonizing trunk; when the crushed limb and the rending joint forced from the innocent victim the voice of his own accusation; in those days, men, as if in solace of their own sufferings, bestowed in sport upon the animal world the tortures which the mistakes of unenlightened justice inflicted on themselves. recreations of men were too often the agonies of beasts; and if the calendars of our ancient games, in the perusal, make the veins run chill with The |