exclusion from intercourse with our fellow-men should be attended with such unspeakable wretchedness. Even the stern and inflexible Coriolanus, for whom all the forms of danger and even death seem to have had no terrors, could not endure his protracted banishment from Rome without bitter complaint: "Multo miserius seni exilium esse.” If we felt at liberty thus to take up the time of the reader, we might, without doubt, illustrate the subject by some affecting statements. It will answer our purpose, however, briefly to recur to a single incident in the history of the Republic of Venice. In the year 1450, a young man by the name of Foscari, the only surviving son of the Doge of the same name, was banished from the Republic on a charge, of which it was subsequently ascertained that he was innocent. Having suffered the wretchedness of banishment for five long years, he at last wrote to the Duke of Milan, imploring his assistance; but the letter was put into the hands of the Venetian Council of Ten. As the laws of the Republic forbade any application to foreign princes in anything which related to the Government of Venice, the Council considered the circumstance such as to require that he should be sent for, and tried upon this new crime. Being brought before them, he made this remarkable statement to the Council: That he wrote the letter in the full persuasion that the merchant, whose character he knew, would betray him, and deliver it to them; the consequence of which, he foresaw, would be his being ordered back to Venice, the only means he had in his power of seeing his parents and friends; a pleasure for which he had languished with insurmountable desire for some time, and which he was willing to purchase at the expense of any danger or pain.-The event showed that he was sincere in what he said, for, on being ordered back to the place of his banishment, he died in a short time of pure anguish of heart. § 144. Further proofs and illustrations of the natural origin of the principle of sociality. The considerations which have hitherto been advanced are plain, obvious, and incontrovertible, showing undeniably that society is man's natural element, and that his permanent removal from it is attended with immeasurable pain. Such instances as those last referred to, which, unfortunately, are found thickly scattered in history, indicate how much of truth and nature there is in the following passage of Thomson's Agamemnon: "Cast on the wildest of the Cyclad isles, Where never hnman foot had marked the shore, I never heard a sound so dismal as their parting oars. But we proceed, in the fourth place, to remark, that there is another class of facts, of a very interesting character, which not only show the existence of this propensity, but illustrate its strength in a most striking manner. Facts can be brought to show that the desire of society is so inseparable from man's nature and so strong, that, if men are entirely excluded from the company of their fellow-men, they will establish an acquaintance and companionship with sheep, dogs, horses, goats, mice, spiders, anything whatever, which has life and motion. "As the old man crept out of his little hut," says Walter Scott, "his two she-goats came to meet him, and licked his hands in gratitude for the vegetables with which he supplied them from his garden."* The Black Dwarf acknowledged the gratitude of these animals, and asserted that, outcast and deformed as he was, the finest shape that ever statuary moulded would be an object of indifference or of alarm, should it present itself instead of the mutilated trunk, to whose services they were accustomed. Although the fictitious delineations of this celebrated writer are hardly less valuable in relation to the human mind than if they were given as the au *The Black Dwarf, chap. vii. thentic details of history, we find, in his Life of Napoleon, an incident parallel to the above, and which throws light on the subject before us. Speaking of the banishments and other forms of suffering connected with the French Revolution, he remarks, that "strangers are forcibly affected by the trifling incidents which sometimes recall the memory of those fearful times. A venerable French ecclesiastic being on a visit at a gentleman's house in North Britain, it was remarked by the family that a favourite cat, rather wild and capricious in his habits, paid particular attention to their guest. It was explained by the priest giving an account of his lurking in the waste garret, or lumber-room, of an artisan's house for several weeks. In this condition he had no better amusement than to study the manners and habits of the cats which frequented his place of retreat, and acquire the mode of conciliating their favour. The difficulty of supplying him with food, without attracting suspicion, was extreme, and it could only be placed near his place of concealment in small quantities and at uncertain times. Men, women, and children knew of his being in that place; there were rewards to be gained by discovery, life to be lost by persevering in concealing him; yet he was faithfully preserved, to try upon a Scottish cat, after the restoration of the Monarchy, the arts which he had learned in his miserable place of shelter during the Reign of Terror. The history of the time abounds with similar instances."* § 145. Other illustrations of a similar kind. The instances of the preceding section are introduced to show that men, if deprived of human sociéty, will endeavour to satisfy the natural demands of their propensities by forming a species of intimacy with the lower animals; a circumstance which seems to us decisively to evince not only the innate existence, but the great strength of the social tendency. * Scott's Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, chap. xvi. There are multitudes of other facts of the same kind, and still more striking than those which have already been noticed. Baron Trenck, for instance, in order to alleviate the wretchedness of his long and dreadful imprisonment, made the attempt, and was successful in it, to tame a mouse. The mouse, according to his account of him, would not only play around him and eat from his hand, but discovered extraordinary marks of sagacity as well as of attachment. "This intelligent mouse," he remarks, “had nearly been my ruin. I had diverted myself with it during the night; it had been nibbling at my door, and capering on a trencher. The sentinels happened to hear our amusement, and called the officers; they heard also, and added, all was not right in my dungeon. At daybreak my doors resounded; the town-major, a smith, and mason entered. Strict search was begun; flooring, walls, chains, and my own person were all scrutinized, but in vain. They asked what was the noise they had heard. I mentioned the mouse, whistled, and it came and jumped upon my shoulder. Orders were given that I should be deprived of its society; I earnestly entreated that they would at least spare its life. The officer on guard gave me his word of honour he would present it to a lady, who would treat it with the utmost tenderness. "He took it away, turned it loose in the guardroom, but it was tame to me alone, and sought a hiding-place. It had fled to my prison door, and, at the hour of visitation, ran into my dungeon, immediately testifying its joy by its antic leaping between my legs. It is worthy of remark that it had been taken away blindfold, that is to say, wrapped in a handkerchief. The guard-room was a hundred paces from my dungeon. How, then, did it find its master? Did it know or did it wait for the hour of visitation? Had it remarked the doors were daily opened? "All were desirous of obtaining this mouse, but the major carried it off for his lady; she put it into a cage, where it pined, refused all sustenance, and in a few days was found dead.-The loss of this little companion made me for some time quite melancholy." § 146. Other instances in illustration of the same subject. Mr. Stewart, in illustrating this very subject, makes the following statement.The Count de Lauzun was confined by Louis XIV. for nine years in the Castle of Pignerol, in a small room where no light could enter but from a chink in the roof. In this solitude he attached himself to a spider, and contrived for some time to amuse himself in attempting to tame it, with catching flies for its support, and with superintending the progress of its web. The jailer discovered his amusement and killed the spider; and the Count used afterward to declare, that the pang he felt on the occasion could be compared only to that of a mother for the loss of a child." وو More recently we find statements of a similar purport in the interesting little work of Silvio Pellico, which gives an account of his Ten Years' Imprisonment.-"Being almost deprived of human society, he remarks, "I one day made acquaintance with some ants upon my window; I fed them; they went away, and, ere long, the place was thronged with these little insects, as if come by invitation. A spider, too, had weaved a noble edifice upon my walls, and I often gave him a feast of gnats or flies, which were extremely annoying to me, and which he liked much better than I did. I got quite accustomed to the sight of him; he would run over my bed, and come and take the precious morsels out of my hand." On a certain occasion, being detected in conversation with his fellow-prisoner, Count Orobini, Pellico was not only reprimanded, but strictly ordered never afterward to converse from his window. He resolutely refused, in language that clearly indicates the workings and longings of the human heart. "I shall do no such thing. I shall speak as long as I have breath, and invite my neighbour to talk to me. If he refuse, I will talk to my window bars, I will talk to the hills |