though there are doubtless other and strong grounds of preference for the family before the bird, the sentiments themselves are the same, and know no distinction of object. Nature, for the help of her creatures, has ordained but a single law, and it is this; that whatever is capable of feeling pain, is worthy of being relieved from it. Very truly have it we, from that august moralist, as well as mighty dramatist, whose works and whose memory are among the most beautiful as well as amazing monuments of human splendour, that the quality of mercy is not strained.' It is not filtered, and then directed to this or that peculiar thing or place; but it falls universally upon all things and places, great and little, and (as we ourselves might more narrowly deem them), the worthy and the unworthy :

'It droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven
Upon the place beneath;'

and again, with that justness and grandeur of sentiment which I have just now intended to attribute to the immortal writer, he has elsewhere followed up the same magnificent morality, by making the susceptibility of pain the all-sufficient plea for the exercise of mercy! With him, and in his eye of love and mercy, the giant and the beetle are upon one level at the feet of gentleness, conclusively and solely because they are upon one level as to the suffering of pain:

The poor beetle, that we tread upon,

In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great

As when a giant dies.'

"But I insist," proceeded Mr. Paulett, "upon this view of my subject, chiefly because it is too much the practice with our modern teachers of humanity to ani

mals, to speak in a qualified and timid manner concerning the duty, such as never was known nor thought of in ancient times, nor ever dictated or permitted by the law of nature; a qualification and timidity, however, which is entirely of a piece with that general degradation of the animal world by the teaching of which we are uniformly contrasted with that same antiquity. With us, the animals live but for our use, and when we cannot use them, are useless and without account. With us, the human species is every thing to God, as well as every thing in nature; and the inferior species nothing. But I have already shown you some few examples of the antique respect for those species; and, if you do but look into your Bible, you will find many more. With us, a provision for man is the immediate care of heaven; but the inferior animals are judged unworthy of such divine regard, and left to find their living as they can. With your Bible, in the meantime, God provides for the young ravens, when they cry for lack of meat;' and listens, with the same compassion and effect, to the hungry roaring of the lions.' With us, animals are created only to serve our purposes; and the importance of the vast leviathan is at once summed up, when we have weighed and counted the tons of bone, and oil, and spermaceti which its slaughtered body has afforded us! For these commodities we are dutifully thankful; from their existence we infer the motive for creating the leviathan; between God and man we see every thing as we should do; but, as to any immediate relation between God and leviathan, or as to any motive for the creation of the latter, centering and ending in itself, and independent of all connexion with mankind-it never enters our heads! With your Bible, in the meantime,

6

God has made the leviathan-just to take his pastime' or, to'play' in the wide sea* !'

"A striking example, however, of the contrasted strength and weakness of the ancient and modern language in behalf of the inferior animals—or of that watering down, if I may so call it, of ancient sentiment and morality upon this subject, to suit the mawkish ness, the pride, the cowardice, and the mincing of modern notions, is within my immediate recollection, and will both amply illustrate all I mean, and amply justify all that I have said. A humane and pious poet and divine among us, of the last age, ventures, in the text of his poem, and while proposing to himself to draw the character of an exemplary person, to write the couplet which I quote:

'E'en to brute beasts his righteous care extends;

He feels their sufferings, and their wants befriends ;'

.

and then, to defend himself with his reader, for making so large a demand upon the latter's ideas of humanity, cites, in a note, those words of the book of Proverbs, of which he is anxious to show that he does no more than put them into verse. E'en to brute beasts,' says, then, the modern poet; but where is the 'even' of the ancient moralist? No! the latter says to us, and could say to his countrymen and contemporaries, broadly, boldly, and without a qualification,- The righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.' There is no 'even,’ you perceive, in these latter words; and though it is very possible that the poet, by its introduction into his lines, did not intend a weakening of the phrase, yet this must be the effect, in the ears of most of those

*Psalm civ.

or

who hear it. In short, as I have formerly warned you of the narrowness of the argument for humanity to animals, upon the sole ground that it nurses preserves in us a humane disposition toward mankind itself; so, I now further warn you of the blamable timidity of the doctrine which requires us to be humane, ' even to brute beasts,' instead of courageously and at once demanding that we should be humane toward every thing that lives."

"Papa," said Richard (who for some time had been evidently watching for the moment when he might ask for explanations upon one or more points in reference to which what he was hearing had perplexed his mind); "Papa, when I think of the wickedness of ill-treating the inferior animals, and of the care of Nature for their happiness, I sometimes fancy that it must be very wrong in us to kill and eat them; and besides, it seems strange to me, that so many other animals should kill and eat them, just as we do?"

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My dear Richard,” replied Mr. Paulett, “though you are a very little boy, you need not be ashamed of finding difficulties in the right understanding of these questions; for very great men, and men in all ages and circumstances, have frequently been perplexed by the same considerations. Whole countries, for centuries after centuries, have entertained such notions, and have adopted practices accordingly; and philosophers have argued, and poets have sung, upon these very subjects. Some have thought it wicked for men to eat the flesh of animals; some have thought the flesheating animals to be themselves wicked; and some, discarding both of those fantastical ideas, have yet been at a loss to reconcile the obvious intention of Nature in these respects, with the mercy which we

yet acknowledge to reign over all her works, and with the care which, as you so properly say, she extends to the happiness of her creatures. But, notwithstanding the perplexities of little boys, and of great men, and the notions which have sometimes obtained through countries and ages, the sound and rational view of the whole subject is very clear, and entirely consistent with the ordinary practice of mankind, and with what we observe in universal nature.

"Let us consider, first," said, then, Mr. Paulett, "the general law of creation, that so many birds, beasts, fishes, reptiles, and insects should subsist by preying upon so many other insects, reptiles, fishes, beasts, and birds; after which, we may turn with the more advantage to the practice of mankind in particular, which lives, in this respect, like the other classes of the whole animal world. Now, this law of nature, so far from being an unmerciful law, and so far from its promoting misery and suffering among the animal races, is the most merciful, the most tender, and the best defence of the inferior animals against suffering and misery, which it would have been possible to devise. If it was necessary and harmonious in nature, that, unless their lives were terminated by a sudden and violent death, their bodies, after a gradual growth, should be subject to a gradual decay; and if, among the inferior animals, that gradual decay would have covered the earth, and filled the air and waters, with pitiable sights, and suffering miserable creatures, in what other way could the law of nature have so well provided, at once the means of this sudden and violent death, and the removal of the bodies of the dead; combining all this, too, with a plan for sustaining other lives through the destruction of the first? In