animals inhabiting the earth, sea, and air which contribute not in the least degree to the comforts of man, and over whom he cannot possess the slightest controul. In proportion as we investigate their natural history, we find that they administer by turns to the material support, comfort, annoyance, or destruction of each other, just as certain tribes do to that of man. The staphyline and carabi, for instance, are the tigers of the insect world, and perform a part, among the minute inhabitants of the mould, similar to that of the lion and the wolf in the forest, and of the pike and the shark in the ocean. Throughout the universe, as far at least as human discovery can penetrate, all animals have, in common with their fellow creature man, a reciprocal influence on the destinies of each other; the stronger, during life, preying on the weaker; all being designed after death to furnish food for the meanest worms, previous to the ultimate resolution of their remains into the dust of the earth from which they came. To say, therefore, that all species have been made for one, is a monstrous inversion of the just order of reasoning; while the more enlightened doctrine which teaches us to regard all as created for all, in one comprehensive system of mutual support, is in conformity with the most correct philosophy. For, as God the Creator of all is one, it is difficult to consider any object of the creation as wholly insulated, and out of the range of the influence of the rest. Thus reasons the naturalist; while the astronomer, pointing to the immensity of the starry heavens, strengthens the argument by the probability, which analogy shows to exist, that man and the globe which he inhabits is but an infinitesimal speck amidst the countless worlds above him, the habitations of living beings of inconceivable varieties of form and character, many of whom are, probably, as much superior, in their natural powers, to ourselves as we are to the smallest zoophite.

The theologist, however, insists on perverted texts and on tradition as furnishing evidence of the controul over animals given to our first parents and exercised from the beginning. But such an argument soon falls to the ground, when we reflect that a similar power has been exercised by man over his own species; the strong having always forced the inferior orders of the weak into a graduated subjugation, and this too by real or pretended divine authority. Thus the offices of king, chief, captain, magistrate, master, and so on, prove the perpetual existence of a system of general controul over individual

volition which, when rightly used, becomes the basis of society; but, when abused, has ever been a source of cruelty and oppression. So it is then with the animal kingdom: we may have derived, from our superior sagacity, a power to subject them in some measure to our will, which, when properly used, is productive of much comfort both to them and to us, while we clothe ourselves with their redundant fleeces, drink their superfluous milk, and protect and multiply their generations. But when we abuse the privileges which our superiority has conferred on us, and in any way overwork or illtreat them, we not only deteriorate their character and abridge their happiness, but incur the stroke of retributive justice, by bringing ourselves within the compass of the mischief which their vitiated natures are capable of doing. Thus the dog, calculated when well used, to be the friend and companion of man, may, by ill usage, be converted into his worst enemy; and the harmless and docile bull who labours in our fields, is rendered, by the human brute who goads him, more dangerous than the untamed hyæna of the wilderness.

We need not be much surprised at the silly notion that animals are without souls and have been made for the exclusive use of man, when we reflect that women, in some of the finest countries of the world, are still believed to be constructed for no other purpose than to be the slaves of their husbands, and are deprived, by popular opinion and the public faith, of the expectation of posthumous existence. Not but what women are often more degradingly treated in Christian than in Mahometan countries, where the stigma of possessing a soulless body does not attach to them.

I must say, however, for the honor of Turkey, that the degrading distinction between the destinies of the two sexes has never been general in that country, nor is it to be found in the Koran; so that, probably, in this, as in other instances, an unmerited libel has been fixed by Christians on their Mussulman neighbours.

If we desire to trace the real origin of the notion that animals. were created solely for man, we must have recourse to other sources of information: we must look to the structure and functions of our own cerebral organs; and we shall surely find, in the history of human pride, a solution of the apparent enigma which envelops this piece of arrogant conceit; nor shall we be less convinced of the justness of the solution, as it regards

animals, when we trace the same sentiment of self esteem, the same ridiculous assumption of importance, in the conduct of men towards one another. The Emperor of China maintains the subjugation of seventy millions of his fellow beings, by styling himself Brother to the Sun and Moon, and calling his empire celestial. In India the higher castes preach the doctrine that the lower are scarcely worthy to be their slaves: Vishnu has had already a plurality of incarnations in order to uphold the religion and authority of his worshippers; and for a Brahmin to eat with a poor Hindoo of degraded caste,would be surely to incur the wrath of Seva and undergo some degrading transmigration. In Europe, till of late years, a counterpart superstition universally prevailed, the remains of which are still traceable in "most gracious" and "most christian" titles conferred ontemporal powers, and in the foolish epithets of nobility still lavished by vulgar and timeserving sycophants on persons courteously believed to be the betters" of the people. Before successive revolutions convinced the world that the sword of Justice was as effective on the right honourable loins of their excellencies the patricians as on the numskull of a plebeian mechanic, Europe as well as Asia perpetually fell into the superstitious belief of a sort of graduated grace of God whereby the different orders of the people had a scale of divinely derived importance. And when this principle was carried across the Atlantic, or extended to Africa, the very pretender to Christianity himself saw nothing repugnant to the holy laws of the Father of all, in the idea that the few whose heads were woolly and whose skins were black had been born only to toil unrewarded for their white brethren. From the earliest records of history we can trace the operation of the same sort of notions: the Jews called themselves the people of God, and treated the Gentiles just as midæval persecutors used to do heretics, by religiously putting them to death in proof of their own superiority. Volney, in his "Ruins," has admirably exposed the pride of caste, of clan and of sect to which I allude, and which is a part of the same defect of judgment and corruption of heart which would fain place, under the absolute controul of man, the lives and fortunes of every other creature. Happily for the age we live in, these things are beginning to be better understood. Christianity, which, when derived from its purest source, the words of its founder, is the most excellent of all moral codes, can no longer be converted into a tool of oppression; but seems destined to be developed by time into a religion of

universal application. I have often amused myself by comparing its progress to the successive metamorphoses of a flying insect. At its first dawn, creeping in profound humility over the surface of the darkened world, like worms in silence, the primitive apostles were simply the preachers of the new doctrine to the people at large destroyed, too, like worms, and persecuted everywhere, they spread, from the excellence of their pabulum : this was its caterpillar state. At a later period, Christianity, dreading the storms of adversity and incursions of barbarians, covered itself, as the Mystics of the East had done before, in an investiture of symbols; and the church, the cloistered convent, and enclosed abbey proved that religion had gone into its chrysalis state. But it may be destined in these our days. to burst from its rough encasement, and, like the butterfly, who at length soars on its newly expanded wings, to fly, unmolested by rapacious birds in human form, from the equator to the poles; till, gathering light from every star of intellect, as bees collect honey from every blossom, it shall at length become the one bond of mutual charity between all existing creatures.

EULOGY OF DOGS.

As Dogs licked the wounds of Lazarus, while Dives despised his poverty and refused him aid; so do we always find demonstrations of canine fidelity the greatest solace under temporary affliction, while the importunities of human hypocrites often add vexation to the weight of sorrow. History is full of examples of the benefits which dogs have conferred on men and of the injuries which mankind have inflicted on dogs. We need only read of the account left us of the dogs of Corinth, of the dogs of St. Bernard and the numerous stories of canine attachment and sagacity recorded in that memorable work the Histoire des Chiens célèbres, and in Taylor's Anecdotes of Dogs, to be convinced of the importance of the blessing which the companionship of this faithful animal has afforded to our species. In all the histories of the extraordinary and unshaken attachment of dogs to their masters, from the faint records left us of the companion of Tobit down to the affecting story of the little cur of Brussels Park lately deceased, who lost his master in the revolution, for whom the government ordered a kennel close to the place where his master fell in all these histories I say we cannot fail to notice the real existence of qualities in the animal which are scarcely more than feigned in the man. Conversely, I may say that there is scarcely a good quality affected by man, for which canine history does not furnish an archetype in examples of the solid and unpretending virtues of the dog. Unfortunately, the history of man and that of the dog afford a comparison so strikingly in favour of the latter, that we blush to own the disparagement, although we may reap benefit from the humiliation. And it is a remarkable circumstance, that I scarcely ever see or hear of an instance of human brutality towards this faithful and confiding animal for which we cannot find an example in the records of human ingratitude. I lately purchased a very curious mongrel