to a bottle of wine, without doing, while they were drinking it, something for your advancement, on pain of forfeiting a half year's subscription, they would ensure you a great benefit either one way or the other.

I recommend also the custom of meditating, while taking exercise out of doors: as natural objects exist without number abroad capable of furnishing useful reflections. Coming home from one of my early twilight rambles with my friend Loski, this summer, a reflection was suggested by the surrounding scenery, quite à propos to the subject at present before us. It was a beautiful morning, and so early, that the village cocks were still counting the night watches to their feathered mates: ducks, geese, and other poultry were issuing forth and making their way to the ponds in long rows, and, as if conscious that" cantando minus via laedit ", were hissing and quackling on their road. Large flights of pigeons, already sallied forth from the dovecotes, were feeding in the fields, where the useful cow and the noble horse were beginning respectively to moow and to neigh, in concert with the jingling of the harnessbells and ploughchains; the donkey was already loaded with vegetables, for market, and tamely submitting to the most savage kicks and cuffs from the peasant girls who drove him to town. From the side of the sloping hills to the north the lowing herds were already in concert with the bleating flocks who, issuing from their lodges, covered the green plains below with their white flecces, like drops of snow just fallen on an emerald lawn. I looked around and wondered at the power of domestication; while, for the moment at least, the whistle of the lively skylark and the crows hoarse cry were drowned in the household melody; and the choral grove thrilling with myriads of songsters was inaudible among the noises of the tame animals that issued from the farm, where the ass, who had so many ungrateful brothers in the kitchen, brayed aloud; and the watch dog, perpetual memento of his master's ingratitude and brutality, still bayed the waning moon. Among all these various sounds, that of the human voice alone was, as it always

has been, ungrateful to my ears; for, whenever it broke through the general murmur, it came, like the herald of oppression, to announce that the tyrant was in the field. I could not, however, avoid the reflection, that since so many animals were contributing in various ways to our comforts, we, in our turn, were bound to do something for them, by the law of reciprocity; whereas, in general, the lamentable fact was that there exists scarcely an animal in the creation, however innocent or useful, from the negro and the buffalo, in the plantation of the rich Indian, to the silkworm and the bee, in the poor man's cottage garden, from whom human brutes, miscalling themselves Christians, did not exact unrequited labour, or, what is worse, a life of toil too frequently rewarded in the end, with insult, cruelty, and murder. There seemed therefore to me such an imperious call for the interference of Societies like yours, in behalf of oppressed animals, that I deemed it expedient and right to contribute my quota, however small, towards its advancement.

You will perceive that I have taken a wide range of enquiry, beginning with a metaphysical view of the Animal Kingdom, and extending my consideration thereof, from that which we actually know of it, to that which we are warranted by the soundest analogy in conjecturing. I have endeavoured in the first section to shew what important philosophical conclusions we are capable of coming to, if, disabusing our minds of the preoccupations of fanaticism and the idle tales of the nursery, we will, take a wide survey of Nature, and employ our faculties in the examination of her moral and physical laws, unbiassed by vulgar prejudice, because conscious of superiour knowledge, and fearless of opposition, so long as we feel that our cause is a just one.

In the second section I have discussed the most important practical part of the enquiry, and shewn what essential changes must be made in the education of man, before other animals can enjoy their just rights, and society benefit by the amended condition of both.

In the third section I have, in particular, recommended the

institution of Canine Foundling Hospitals; like those which in India exist on a large scale for animals in general. For it is a sad reflection that we, who boast so much of the civilisation of the West of Europe, should be behind our Eastern neighbours in any institutions of humanity.

In the subsequent sections will be found a large mass of miscellaneous matter seldom, if ever, before placed in the same point of view, and illustrated by numerous anecdotes.

The task would have been by no means unpleasing, had I been better capable of performing it. A great satisfaction attends the foundation of any useful institution; which you must have already felt: if we analyse this pleasure, we shall find it to consist in the conscious exercise of power for a permanent good. And in this respect moral have a great advantage over physical institutions, from their greater durability and more extensive influence: half a century suffices to lower the sinewy strength of Hercules to a level with that of a baby; and the beauty of Venus, when a few years have reduced her to ashes, is not dis tinguishable from the remains of little Hunchback of Bagdad whose ugliness is so well described in the Arabian Nights. But the moral character of Socrates or Confucius is as fresh to day as it was two thousand years ago. A similar fate attends the strongest buildings: the great cities which once ornamented the East are now no more; and, though some ancient pyramids, from their particular form, have survived the fall of others, they are all hastening to decay, and will sink into oblivion long before the names of their founders. But the moral philosophy of Horace and of Seneca is a monument of incomparable durability which no tempest of the passions has been able to overthrow, nor action of the elements to pulverize. The mighty temple of Jerusalem is fallen to ruins; but the code of morals which sprang from the humble stall of the ox and the ass in Bethlehem gathers strength with years, and is refreshing the whole surface of the earth with its wholesome doctrines. According to the consoling view offered by Religion, this moral influence is of still higher importance: for, there, he who

sows a good seed in the mind of man, causes a plant to take root in the human heart, whose branches penetrate the skies and bear their fruits in Heaven. I trust therefore that you will long live to enjoy the consciousness of being an active disseminator of useful opinions, and that the Society will flourish under your auspices, like the palms of Jericho, and will spread abroad as the cedar trees of Lebanon; and that when at length the cypress and the yew shall overshadow your urn, the place of your repose will not be desecrated, as is too often the case, by the profane scrawl of the courteous lapidary; but that a dog of marble on one side and a horse of adamant on the other will testify to posterity that one among the sons of men was found, who preached morality without cant, exercised charity without distinction and practised virtue unstained by any mercenary view of selfish reward.

As,therefore, you are President of the Animals Friend Society, certainly the most truly benevolent and charitable that this age, distinguished for its humane institutions, has produced; and, as you enjoy the conscious satisfaction of having been the principal instrument of its foundation; so I have selected you as the properest person to whom I could dedicate these observations, together with such reflections on the best mode of improving the animal world, as have occurred to my mind during the necessary meditations that I have made on this subject. And I have done so, because I felt that, with your superior powers of combination and more extended influence over the opinions of society, you might be able to make a better use of my experience and suggestions than almost any other person. Our acquaintance, I remember, began above twenty eight years ago; for it was in the summer of 1810, and I believe on Monday the 18th of June, that I first quaffed the Wassail Bowl of Hospitality with you and your brother Benjamin,at Walthamstow: we might then be said to be

Studiis florentes ignobilis ôti.

But I recollect that, at that early period of life when all the physical sciences rise, like dazzling stars, one after another, on

the horizon of the young mind, I had already begun to turn my attention to enquiries of a metaphysical nature; and, discarding the prejudices from which the best education is never exempt, to call in question the validity of many opinions which the world in general entertain. Among other things my attention was forcibly drawn to the power which animals evidently possess of comparing their ideas in such a manner as to enable them to reason; and I consequently soon detected the fallacy of those gratuitous distinctions which proud and selfish human beings have attempted to draw, in their own favour, between themselves and other brutes, with an interested view of benefiting by a fictitious disparagement of the qualities and consequently of the rights of their fellow animals.

Since the period I alluded to, I have been perpetually occupied, more or less, with the study of natural history; and have improved my knowledge of the mental powers, vulgarly called instincts, of animals by a constant attention to their habits compared with the peculiarities of their cerebral organization. I wish to invite you also to praticipate in these studies; as they will furnish you with additional arguments for promoting the comforts of animals, founded on a more minute acquaintance with their minds; and with the similarity that exists between their intelligence and passions and those of our own species.

My father used to say that the suresi criterion of a good man was kindness towards animals: it being of all other ostensible virtues the least open to suspicion of hypocrisy. And I believe he was right: for I never knew a man endowed in a high degree with this amiable propensity, even if his conduct were reproachable in other respects, who did not possess redeeming qualities enough to render him an estimable friend and member of society. On the other hand, I have always ascribed the apparent virtues of men who have been wanting in such humanity, to interested dissimulation. The truth of this observation will appear more evident when we come to treat of education.

You will perceive that, among the supplementary additions