hunting bees and pulling them to pieces; or catching flies on the window, plucking off their wings and legs, sticking pins through them, and laughing at the poor insects as they twist and tumble about in pain. What animal can be more inoffensive or useful in a house than a cat? yet, whenever it stirs out of the house, some idle rascals chase it, stone it, or set on a dog to worry it, while they stand looking on and enjoying the animal's sufferings. The chief pleasure of some boys, who live in the country, seems to consist in killing birds and robbing their nests; chasing the cows and sheep till they are ready to fall down; lashing the horses, and especially any poor donkey that may fall in their way; setting all the dogs to fight with each other, or to worry the cats, or to frighten children; and in making themselves a terror to the neighbourhood.

Now, children who shew such cruelty when they are young, can hardly be expected

to turn very kind and gentle-hearted when they grow up; nor will they be kind to their brothers and sisters if they delight in inflicting pain upon beasts. A boy who is really kind-hearted will treat every animal with kindness; and nothing is a more certain mark of a brutal disposition than feeling pleasure in tormenting poor dumb creatures. It is perfect nonsense to say that beasts feel no pain; we see that they shew all the symptoms of pain which human beings do; and a horse suffers just as much from a whipping as a boy would do.

How little those children who rejoice in cruelty think of the pleasure they might receive by treating every beast in a kind and gentle manner! Dogs, cats, rabbits, squirrels, pigeons, and every sort of bird, soon learn to distinguish the hand that feeds them and uses them gently; and their innocent sports, and playful gratitude, afford a never-ending source of pleasure, far deeper, as well as

purer, than any which can be derived from torturing them. It would be well if all who profess to be our friends were to be as faithfully attached to us as our dogs are; and if those on whom we bestow favours were to manifest the same gratitude which we can see in the faces of our dumb favourites.

221

KINDNESS TO ANIMALS.

I WOULD not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man

Who needlessly set foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarn'd,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight,
And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes,
A visitor unwelcome, into scenes

Sacred to neatness and repose, may die:
A necessary act incurs no blame.

Not so when, held within their proper bounds,
And guiltless of offence, they range the air,
Or take their pastime in the spacious field:
There they are privileged; and he that hunts
Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong,
Disturbs the economy of Nature's realm,
Who, when she form'd, design'd them an abode.
The sum is this. If man's convenience, health,
Or safety, interfere, his rights and claims
Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs.

Else they are all-the meanest things that are,
As free to live, and to enjoy that life,

As God was free to form them at the first,
Who in his Sovereign wisdom made them all.
Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it too. The spring-time of our years
Is soon dishonour'd and defiled in most

By budding ills, that ask a prudent hand
To check them. But, alas! none sooner shoots,
If unrestrained, into luxuriant growth,

Than cruelty, most devilish of them all.
Mercy to him that shews it is the rule
And righteous limitation of its act,

By which heaven moves in pardoning guilty man;
And he that shews none, being ripe in years,
And conscious of the outrage he commits,

Shall seek it, and not find it, in his turn.

COWPER.

THE VILLAGE BULLY.

WILLIAM, or, as he was usually called, Billy Jones, was the bully of the village. He was a lazy, hulking boy of twelve; and you could