feels more pride in being a sceptic, the conqueror of all systems, than he ever felt in being the champion of one, even then it is very possible he may spring up again, like a vapour of fire from a bog, and glimmer through new mazes, or retrace his course through half of those which he trod before. You will observe that no respect attaches to this Proteus of opinion after his changes have been multiplied, as no party expect him to remain with them, nor deem him much of an acquisition if he should. One, or perhaps two, considerable changes will be regarded as signs of a liberal inquirer, and therefore the party to which his first or his second intellectual conversion may assign him will receive him gladly. But he will be deemed to have abdicated the dignity of reason when it is found that he can adopt no principles but to betray them; and it will be perhaps justly suspected that there is something extremely infirm in the structure of that mind, whatever vigour may mark some of its operations, to which a series of very different, and sometimes contrasted theories, can appear in succession demonstratively true, and which imitates sincerely the perverseness which Petruchio only affected, declaring that which was yesterday to a certainty the sun, to be to-day as certainly the moon. quities, after having been so long beguiled, like the mariners in a story which I remember to have read, who followed the direction of their compass, infallibly right as they thought, till they arrived at an enemy's port, where they were seized and doomed to slavery. It happened that the wicked captain, in order to betray the ship, had concealed a large loadstone at a little distance on one side of the needle. On the notions and expectations of one stage of life I suppose all reflecting men look back with a kind of contempt, though it may be often with the mingling wish that some of its enthusiasm of feeling could be recovered-I mean the period between proper childhood and maturity. They will allow that their reason was then feeble, and they are prompted to exclaim, What fools we have been-while they recollect how sincerely they entertained and advanced the most ridiculous speculations on the interests of life and the questions of truth; how regretfully astonished they were to find the mature sense of some of those around them so completely wrong; yet in other instances, what veneration they felt for authorities for which they have since lost all their respect; what a fantastic importance they attached to some most trivial things; what complaints against their fate were uttered on account of disappointments which they have since recollected with gaiety or self-congratulation; what happiness of Elysium they expected from sources which would soon have failed to impart even common satisfaction; and how certain they were that the feelings and opinions then predominant would continue through life. If a reflective aged man were to find at the bottom of an old chest-where it had lain forgotten fifty years-a record which he had written of himself when he was young, simply and vividly describing his whole heart and pursuits, and reciting verbatim many passages of the language which he sincerely uttered, would he not read it with more wonder than almost every other writing could at his age inspire? He would half lose the assurance of his identity, under the impression of this immense dissimilarity. It would seem as if it must be the tale of the juvenile days of some ancestor, with whom he had no connexion but that of name. He would feel the young man thus introduced to him separated by so wide a distance of character as to render all congenial sociality impossible. At every sentence he would be tempted to repeat-Foolish youth, I have no sympathy with your feelings, I can hold no converse with your understanding. Thus, you see that in the course of a long life a man may be several moral persons, so various from one another, that if you could find a real individual that should nearly exemplify the character in one of these stages, and another that should exemplify it in the next, and so on to the last, and then bring these several persons together into one society, which would thus be a representation of the successive states of one man, they would feel themselves a most heterogeneous party, would oppose and probably despise one another, and soon after separate, not caring if they were never to meet again. If the dissimilarity in mind were as great as in person, there would in both respects be a most striking contrast between the extremes at least, in-between the youth of seventeen and the sage of seventy. The one of these contrasts an old man might contemplate if he had a true portrait for which he sat in the bloom of his life, and should hold it beside a mirror in which he looks at his present countenance; and the other would be powerfully felt if he had such a genuine and detailed memoir as I have supposed. Might it not be worth while for a self-observant person, in early life to preserve, for the inspection of the old man, if he should live so long, such a mental likeness of the young one? If it be not drawn near the time, it can never be drawn with sufficient accuracy. It would be curious to observe in a man, who should make such an exhibition of the course of his mind, the sly deceit of self-love. While he despises the system which he has rejected, he does not deem it to imply so great a want of sense in him once to have embraced it, as in the rest who were then or are now its disciples and advocates. No; in him it was no debility of reason; it was at the utmost but a merge of it; and probably he is prepared to explain to you that such peculiar circumstances, as might warp even a very strong and liberal mind, attended his consideration of the subject, and misled him to admit the belief of what others prove themselves fools by believing. Another thing apparent in a record of changed opinions would be, what I have noticed before, that there is scarcely any such thing in the world as simple conviction. It would be amusing to observe how reason had, in one instance, been overruled into acquiescence by the admiration of a celebrated name, or in another into opposition by the envy of it; how most opportunely reason discovered the truth just at the time that interest could be essentially served by avowing it; how easily the impartial examiner could be induced to adopt some part of another man's opinions, after that other had zealously approved some favourite, especially if unpopular part of his, as the Pharisees almost became partial even to Christ at the moment that he defended one of their doctrines against the Sadducees. It would be curious to see how a professed respect for a man's character and talents, and concern for his interests, might be changed, in consequence of some personal inattention experienced from him, into illiberal invective against him or his intellectual performances, and yet the railer, though actuated solely by petty revenge, account himself the model of equity and candour all the while. It might be seen how the patronage of power could elevate miserable prejudices into revered wisdom, while poor old Experience was mocked with thanks for her struction; and how the vicinity or society of the rich, and, as they are termed, great, could perhaps melt a soul that seemed to be of the stern consistence of early Rome, into the gentlest wax on which Corruption could wish to imprint the venerable creed- The right divine of kings to govern wrong,' with the pious inference that justice was outraged when virtuous Tarquin was expelled. I am supposing the observer to perceive all these accommodating dexterities of reason; for it were probably absurd to expect that any mind should tself be able in its review to detect all its own obli DR ADAM CLARKE. Another distinguished dissenter was DR ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832), a profound Oriental scholar, author of a Commentary on the Bible, and editor of a collection of state papers supplementary to Rymer's Fœdera. Dr Clarke was a native of Moybeg, a village in Londonderry, Ireland, where his father was a schoolmaster. He was educated at Kingswood school, an establishment of Wesley's projecting for the instruction of itinerant preachers. In due time he himself became a preacher; and so indefatigable was he in propagating the doctrines of the Wesleyan persuasion, that he twice visited Shetland, and established there a Methodist mission. In the midst of his various journeys and active duties, Dr Clarke continued those researches which do honour to his name. He fell a victim to the cholera when that fatal pestilence visited our shores. REV. ARCHIBALD ALISON. The REV. ARCHIBALD ALISON (1757-1838) was senior minister of St Paul's chapel, Edinburgh. After a careful education at Glasgow university and Baliol college, Oxford (where he took his degree of B.C.L. in 1784), Mr Alison entered into sacred orders, and was presented to different livings by Sir William Pulteney, Lord Loughborough, and Dr Douglas, bishop of Salisbury. Having, in 1784, married the daughter of Dr John Gregory of Edinburgh, Mr Alison looked forward to a residence in Scotland, but it was not till the close of the last century that he was able to realise his wishes. In 1790 he published his admirable Essay on the Nature and Principles of Taste, and in 1814 two volumes of sermons, justly admired for the elegance and beauty of their language, and their gentle persuasive inculcation of Christian duty. On points of doctrine and controversy the author is wholly silent: his writings, as one of his critics remarked, were designed for those who want to be roused to a sense of the beauty and the good that exist in the universe around them, and who are only indifferent to the feelings of their fellow-creatures, and negligent of the duties they impose, for want of some persuasive monitor to awake the dormant capacities of their nature, and to make them see and feel the delights which providence has attached to their exercise. A selection from the sermons of Mr Alison, consisting of those on the four seasons, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, was afterwards printed in a small volume. [From the Sermon on Autumn.] There is an eventide in the day-an hour when the sun retires and the shadows fall, and when nature assumes the appearances of soberness and silence. It is an hour from which everywhere the thoughtless fly, as peopled only in their imagination with images of gloom; it is the hour, on the other hand, which in every age the wise have loved, as bringing with it sentiments and affections more valuable than all the splendours of the day. Its first impression is to still all the turbulence of thought or passion which the day may have brought forth. We follow with our eye the descending sun -we listen to the decaying sounds of labour and of toil; and, when all the fields are silent around us, we feel a kindred stillness to breathe upon our souls, and to calm them from the agitations of society. From this first impression there is a second which naturally follows it: in the day we are living with men, in the eventide we begin to live with nature; we see the world withdrawn from us, the shades of night darken over the habitations of men, and we feel ourselves alone. It is an hour fitted, as it would seem, by Him who made us to still, but with gentle hand, the throb of every unruly passion, and the ardour of every impure desire; and, while it veils for a time the world that misleads us, to awaken in our hearts those legitimate affections which the heat of the day may have dissolved. There is yet a farther scene it presents to us. While the world withdraws from us, and while the shades of the evening darken upon our dwellings, the splendours of the firmament come forward to our view. In the moments when earth is overshadowed, heaven opens to our eyes the radiance of a sublimer being; our hearts follow the successive splendours of the scene; and while we forget for a time the obscurity of earthly concerns, we feel that there are 'yet greater things than these.' There is, in the second place, an eventide' in the year a season, as we now witness, when the sun withdraws his propitious light, when the winds arise and the leaves fall, and nature around us seems to sink into decay. It is said, in general, to be the season of melancholy; and if by this word be meant that it is the time of solemn and of serious thought, it is undoubtedly the season of melancholy; yet it is a melancholy so soothing, so gentle in its approach, and so prophetic in its influence, that they who have known it feel, as instinctively, that it is the doing of God, and that the heart of man is not thus finely touched but to fine issues. When we go out into the fields in the evening of the year, a different voice approaches us. We regard, even in spite of ourselves, the still but steady advances of time. A few days ago, and the summer of the year was grateful, and every element was filled with life, and the sun of heaven seemed to glory in his ascendant. He is now enfeebled in his power; the desert no more blossoms like the rose; the song of joy is no more heard among the branches; and the earth is strewed with that foliage which once bespoke the magnificence of summer. Whatever may be the pas sions which society has awakened, we pause amid this apparent desolation of nature. We sit down in the lodge of the wayfaring man in the wilderness,' and we feel that all we witness is the emblem of our own fate. Such also in a few years will be our own condition. The blossoms of our spring, the pride of our summer, will also fade into decay; and the pulse that now beats high with virtuous or with vicious desire, we rise from our meditations with hearts softened will gradually sink, and then must stop for ever. and subdued, and we return into life as into a shadowy scene, where we have disquieted ourselves in vain.' 6 Yet a few years, we think, and all that now bless, or all that now convulse humanity, will also have perished. The mightiest pageantry of life will passthe loudest notes of triumph or of conquest will be silent in the grave; the wicked, wherever active, 'will cease from troubling,' and the weary, wherever suffering, will be at rest.' Under an impression so profound we feel our own hearts better. The cares, the animosities, the hatreds which society may have engendered, sink unperceived from our bosoms. In the general desolation of nature we feel the littleness of our own passions-we look forward to that kindred evening which time must bring to all-we anticipate the graves of those we hate as of those we love. Every unkind passion falls with the leaves that fall around us; and we return slowly to our homes, and to the society which surrounds us, with the wish only to enlighten or to bless them. appearances of nature upon our minds, they would If there were no other effects, my brethren, of such still be valuable-they would teach us humility, and with it they would teach us charity. DR ANDREW THOMSON. DR ANDREW THOMSON (1779-1831), an active and able minister of the Scottish church, was author of various sermons and lectures, and editor of the Scottish Christian Instructor, a periodical which exercised no small influence in Scotland on ecclesiastical questions. Dr Thomson was successively minister of Sprouston, in the presbytery of Kelso, of the East Church, Perth, and of St George's Church, Edinburgh. In the annual meetings of the general assembly he displayed great ardour and eloquence as a debater, and was the recognized leader of one of the church parties. He waged a long and keen warfare with the British and Foreign Bible Society for circulating the books of the Apocrypha along with the Bible, and his speeches on this subject, though exaggerated in tone and manner, produced a powerful effect. There was, in truth, always more of the debater than the divine in his public addresses; and he was an unmerciful opponent in controversy. When the question of the abolition of colonial slavery was agitated in Scotland, he took his stand on the expediency of immediate abolition, and by his public appearances on this subject, and the energy of his eloquence, carried the feelings of his countrymen completely along with him. The life of this ardent, impetuous, and independent-minded man was brought suddenly and awfully to a close. In the prime of health and vigour he fell down dead at the threshold of his own door. The sermons of Dr Thomson scarcely support his high reputation as a church leader and debater. They are weighty and earnest, but without pathos or elegance of style. DR THOMAS CHALMERS. The most distinguished and able of living Scottish divines is THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D. and LL.D., one of the first Presbyterian ministers who obtained an honorary degree from the university of Cambridge, Dr Thomas Chalmers. and one of the few Scotsmen who have been elected a corresponding member of the Royal Institute of France. The collected works of Dr Chalmers fill twenty-five duodecimo volumes. Of these the two first are devoted to Natural Theology; three and four to Evidences of Christianity; five, Moral Philosophy; six, Commercial Discourses; seven, Astronomical Discourses; eight, nine, and ten, Congregational Sermons; eleven, Sermons on Public Occasions; twelve, Tracts and Essays; thirteen, Introductory Essays, originally prefixed to editions of Select Christian Authors; fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, Christian and Economic Polity of a Nation, more especially with reference to its Large Towns; seventeen, On Church and College Endowments; eighteen, On Church Extension; nineteen and twenty, Political Economy; twenty-one, The Sufficiency of a Parochial System without a Poor- Rate; twenty-two, three, four, and five, Lectures on the Romans. In all Dr Chalmers's works there is great energy and earnestness, accompanied with a vast variety of illustration. His knowledge is extensive, including science no less than literature, the learning of the philosopher with the fancy of the poet, and a fami liar acquaintance with the habits, feelings, and daily life of the Scottish poor and middle classes. The ardour with which he pursues any favourite topic, presenting it to the reader or hearer in every possible point of view, and investing it with the charms of a rich poetical imagination, is a peculiar feature in his intellectual character, and one well calculated to arrest attention.* It gives peculiar effect to his Robert Hall seems to have been struck with this peculiarity. In some Gleanings from Hall's Conversational Remarks, appended to Dr Gregory's Memoir, we find the following criticism, understood to refer to the Scottish divine:- Mr Hall repeatedly referred to Dr, and always in terms of great esteem as well as high admiration of his general character, exercising, however, his usual free and independent judgment. The following are some remarks on that extraordinary individual:-" Pray, sir, did you ever know any man who had that singular faculty of repetition possessed by Dr-? Why, sir, he often reiterates the same thing ten or twelve times in the course of a few pages. Even Burke himself had not so much of that peculiarity. His mind resembles that optical instrument lately invented; what do you call it?" "You mean, I suppose, the kaleidoscope." "Yes, sir, an idea thrown into his mind is just as if thrown into a kaleidoscope. Every turn presents the object in a new and beautiful form; but the object presented is still the same. * * His mind seems to move on hinges, not on wheels. There is incessant motion, but no progress. When he was at Leicester, he preached a most admirable sermon on the necessity of immediate repentance; but there were only two ideas in it, and on these his mind revolved as on a pivot."' A writer in the London Magazine gives a graphic account of Dr Chalmers's appearances in London. When he visited London, the hold that he took on the minds of men was unprecedented. It was a time of strong political feeling; but even that was unheeded, and all parties thronged to hear the Scottish preacher. The very best judges were not prepared for the display that they heard. Canning and Wilberforce went together, and got into a pow near the door. The elder in attendance stood close by the pew. Chalmers began in his usual unpromising way, by stating a few nearly self-evident propositions neither in the "If this choicest language nor in the most impressive voice. be all," said Canning to his companion, "it will never do." Chalmers went on-the shuffling of the congregation gradually subsided. He got into the mass of his subject; his weakness became strength, his hesitation was turned into energy; and, bringing the whole volume of his mind to bear upon it, he poured forth a torrent of the most close and conclusive argument, brilliant with all the exuberance of an imagination which ranged over all nature for illustrations, and yet managed and applied each of them with the same unerring dexterity, as if that single one had been the study of a whole life. "The tartan beats us," said Mr Canning; "we have no preaching like that in England." Chalmers, like the celebrated French divines (according to Goldsmith), assumed all that dignity and zeal which become men who are ambassadors from Christ The English divines, like timorous envoys, seem more solici tous not to offend the court to which they are sent, than to drive home the interests of their employers. The style of Dr pulpit ministrations; for by concentrating his attention on one or two points at a time, and pressing these home with almost unexampled zeal and animation, a distinct and vivid impression is conveyed to the mind, unbroken by any extraneous or discursive matter. His pictures have little or no background-the principal figure or conception fills the canvass. The style of Dr Chalmers is far from being correct or elegant-it is often turgid, loose, and declamatory, vehement beyond the bounds of good taste, and disfigured by a peculiar and by no means graceful phraseology. These blemishes are, however, more than redeemed by his piety and eloquence, the originality of many of his views, and the astonishing force and ardour of his mind. His Astronomical Discourses' contain passages of great sublimity and beauty, and even the most humble and prosaic subject, treated by him, becomes attractive and poetical. His triumphs are those of genius, aided by the deepest conviction of the importance of the truths he inculcates. · as before. In a word, though I might have made him a more upright and honourable man, I might have left him as destitute of the essence of religious principle as ever. But the interesting fact is, that during the whole of that period in which I made no attempt against the natural enmity of the mind to God, while I was inattentive to the way in which this enmity is dissolved, even by the free offer on the one hand, and the believing acceptance on the other, of the gospel salvation; while Christ, through whose blood the sinner, who by nature stands afar off, is brought near to the heavenly Lawgiver whom he has offended, was scarcely ever spoken of, or spoken of in such a way as stripped him of all the importance of his character and his offices, even at this time I certainly did press the reformations of honour, and truth, and integrity among my people; but I never once heard of any such reformations having been effected amongst them. If there was anything at all brought about in this way, it was more than ever I got any account of. I am not sensible that all the vehemence with which I Dr Chalmers is a native of Anstruther, in the urged the virtues and the proprieties of social life had county of Fife. A fugitive memoir states that he the weight of a feather on the moral habits of my was born about the year 1780, that he studied at St parishioners. And it was not till I got impressed by Andrews, and was soon a mathematician, a natural the utter alienation of the heart in all its desires and philosopher, and, though there was no regular pro- affections from God; it was not till reconciliation to fessor of that science at St Andrews, a chemist.' him became the distinct and the prominent object of After his admission to holy orders, he officiated for my ministerial exertions; it was not till I took the sometime as assistant to the minister of Wilton, Scriptural way of laying the method of reconciliation near Hawick. He afterwards obtained the church before them; it was not till the free offer of forgiveof Kilmany, in his native county, and here the actiness through the blood of Christ was urged upon their vity of his mind was strikingly displayed. In addi- acceptance, and the Holy Spirit given through the tion to his parochial labours, he lectured in the channel of Christ's mediatorship to all who ask him, different towns on chemistry and other subjects; he dependence and their prayers; it was not, in one was set before them as the unceasing object of their became an officer of a volunteer corps; and he wrote a book on the resources of the country, besides word, till the contemplations of my people were turned pamphlets on some of the topics of the day; and of a soul providing for its interest with God and the to these great and essential elements in the business when the Edinburgh Encyclopædia was projected, he was invited to be a contributor, and engaged to those subordinate reformations which I aforetime concerns of its eternity, that I ever heard of any of furnish the article "Christianity," which he after-made the earnest and the zealous, but, I am afraid, wards completed with so much ability." At Kil- at the same time the ultimate object of my earlier many Dr Chalmers seems to have received more ministrations. Ye servants, whose scrupulous fidelity serious and solemn impressions as to his clerical has now attracted the notice and drawn forth in my duties, for in an address to the inhabitants of the hearing a delightful testimony from your masters, parish, included in his tracts, there is the following what mischief you would have done had your zeal remarkable passage :— for doctrines and sacraments been accompanied by the sloth and the remissness, and what, in the prevailing tone of moral relaxation, is counted the allow able purloining of your earlier days! But a sense of your heavenly Master's eye has brought another irfluence to bear upon you; and while you are thus striving to adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour in all things, you may, poor as you are, reclaim the great ones of the land to the acknowledgment of the faith. You have at least taught me that to preach Christ is the only effective way of preaching morality in all its branches; and out of your humble cottages have I gathered a lesson, which I pray God I may be enabled to carry with all its simplicity into a wider theatre, and to bring with all the power of its subduing efficacy upon the vices of a more crowded population. • [Inefficacy of mere Moral Preaching.] And here I cannot but record the effect of an actual though undesigned experiment which I prosecuted for upwards of twelve years amongst you. For the greater part of that time I could expatiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villany of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny-in a word, upon all those deformities of character which awaken the natural indignation of the human heart against the pests and the disturbers of human society. Now, could I, upon the strength of these warm expostulations, have got the thief to give up his stealing, and the evil speaker his censoriousness, and the liar his deviations from truth, I should have felt all the repose of one who had gotten his ultimate object. It never occurred to me that all this might have been done, and yet every soul of every hearer have remained in full alienation from God; and that even could I have established in the bosom of one who stole such a principle of abhorrence at the meanness of dishonesty that he was prevailed upon to steal no more, he might still have retained a heart as completely unturned to God, and as totally unpossessed by a principle of love to Him, Chalmers became the rage in Scotland among the young From Kilmany Dr Chalmers removed to the new church of St John's in Glasgow, where his labours were unceasing and meritorious. Here his principal sermons were delivered and published; and his fame as a preacher and author was diffused not only over Great Britain, but throughout all Europe and America. In 1823 he removed to St Andrews, as professor of moral philosophy in the United college; and in 1828 he was appointed professor of divinity in the university of Edinburgh. This appointment he relinquished in 1843, on his secession from the established church. [Picture of the Chase-Cruelty to Animals.] The sufferings of the lower animals may, when out of sight, be out of mind. But more than this, these sufferings may be in sight, and yet out of mind. This is strikingly exemplified in the sports of the field, in the midst of whose varied and animating bustle that cruelty which all along is present to the senses may not for one moment have been present to the thoughts. There sits a somewhat ancestral dignity and glory on this favourite pastime of joyous old England; when the gallant knighthood, and the hearty yeomen, and the amateurs or virtuosos of the chase, and the full assembled jockeyship of half a province, muster together in all the pride and pageantry of their great emprize-and the panorama of some noble landscape, lighted up with autumnal clearness from an unclouded heaven, pours fresh exhilaration into every blithe and choice spirit of the scene and every adventurous heart is braced and impatient for the hazards of the coming enterprise-and even the high-breathed coursers catch the general sympathy, and seem to fret in all the restiveness of their yet checked and irritated fire, till the echoing horn shall set them at liberty-even that horn which is the knell of death to some trembling victim now brought forth of its lurking-place to the delighted gaze, and borne down upon with the full and open cry of its ruthless pursuers. Be assured that, amid the whole glee and fervency of this tumultuous enjoyment, there might not, in one single bosom, be aught so fiendish as a principle of naked and abstract cruelty. The fear which gives its lightning-speed to the unhappy animal; the thickening horrors which, in the progress of exhaustion, must gather upon its flight; its gradually sinking energies, and, at length, the terrible certainty of that destruction which is awaiting it; that piteous cry which the ear can sometimes distinguish amid the deafening clamour of the bloodhounds as they spring exultingly upon their prey; the dread massacre and dying agonies of a creature so miserably torn; all this weight of suffering, we admit, is not once sympathised with; but it is just because the suffering itself is not once thought of. It touches not the sensibilities of the heart; but just because it is never present to the notice of the mind. We allow that the hardy followers in the wild romance of this occupation, we allow them to be reckless of pain, but this is not rejoicing in pain. Theirs is not the delight of the savage, but the apathy of unreflecting creatures. They are wholly occupied with the chase itself and its spirit-stirring accompaniments, nor bestow one moment's thought on the dread violence of that infliction upon sentient nature which marks its termination. It is the spirit of the competition, and it alone, which goads onward this hurrying career; and even he who in at the death is foremost in the triumph, although to him the death itself is in sight, the agony of its wretched sufferer is wholly out of mind. * * Man is the direct agent of a wide and continual distress to the lower animals, and the question is, Can any method be devised for its alleviation? On this subject that Scriptural image is strikingly realised, 'The whole inferior creation groaning and travailling together in pain,' because of him. It signifies not to the substantive amount of the suffering whether this be prompted by the hardness of his heart, or only permitted through the heedlessness of his mind. In either way it holds true, not only that the arch-devourer man stands pre-eminent over the fiercest children of the wilderness as an animal of prey, but that for his lordly and luxurious appetite, as well as for his service or merest curiosity and amusement, Nature must be ransacked throughout all her elements. Rather than forego the veriest gratifications of vanity, be will wring them from the anguish of wretched and ill-fated creatures; and whether for the indulgence of his barbaric sensuality or barbaric splendour, can stalk paramount over the sufferings of that prostrate creation which has been placed beneath his feet. That beauteous domain whereof he has been constituted the terrestrial sovereign, gives out so many blissful and benignant aspects; and whether we look to its peaceful lakes, or to its flowery landscapes, or its evening skies, or to all that soft attire which overspreads the hills and the valleys, lighted up by smilse of sweetest sunshine, and where animals disport themselves in all the exuberance of gaiety-this surely were a more befitting scene for the rule of clemency, than for the iron rod of a murderous and remorseless tyrant. But the present is a mysterious world wherein we dwell. It still bears much upon its materialism of the impress of Paradise. But a breath from the air of Pandemonium has gone over its living generations; and so the fear of man and the dread of man is now upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into man's hands are they delivered: every moving thing that liveth is meat for him; yea, even as the green herbs, there have been given to him all things. Such is the extent of his jurisdiction, and with most full and wanton license has he revelled among its privileges. The whole earth labours and is in violence because of his cruelties; and from the amphitheatre of sentient Nature there sounds in fancy's ear the bleat of one wide and universal suffering a dreadful homage to the power of Nature's constituted lord. " These sufferings are really felt. The beasts of the field are not so many automata without sensations and just so constructed as to give forth all the natural signs and expressions of it. Nature hath not practised this universal deception upon our species. These poor animals just look, and tremble, and give forth the very indications of suffering that we do. Theirs is the distinct cry of pain. Theirs is the unequivocal physiognomy of pain. They put on the same aspect of terror on the demonstrations of a menaced blow. They exhibit the same distortions of agony after the infliction of it. The bruise, or the burn, or the fracture, or the deep incision, or the fierce encounter with one of equal or superior strength, just affects them similarly to ourselves. Their blood circulates as ours. They have pulsations in various parts of the body like ours. They sicken, and they grow feeble with age, and, finally, they die just as we do. They possess the same feelings; and, what exposes them to like suffering from another quarter, they possess the same instincts with our own species. The lioness robbed of her whelps causes the wilderness to wring aloud with the proclamation of her wrongs; or the bird whose little household has been stolen, fills and saddens all the grove with melodies of deepest pathos. All this is palpable even to the general and unlearned eye and when the physiologist lays open the recesses of their system by means of that scalpel, under whose operation they just shrink and are convulsed as any living subject of our own species--there stands forth to view the same sentient apparatus, and furnished with the same conductors for the transmission of feeling to every minutest pore upon the surface. Theirs is unmixed and unmitigated pain-the agonies of martyrdom without the alleviation of the hopes and the sentiments whereof they are incapable. When they lay them down to die, their only fellowship is with suffering; for in the prison-house of their beset and bounded faculties there can no relief be afforded by communion with other interests or other things. The attention does not lighten their distress as it does that of man, by carrying off his spirit from that existing pungency and pressure which might else be overwhelming. There is but room in their myste |