TREATMENT OF FARM-STOCK. 25 



world's scorn, — it is useful and interesting to know if the 

 germs of their turpitude were perceptible in the days of their 

 3-outhful innocence ; whether the cold-blooded murderer of 

 later life gave evidences of his future ferocity by the torture 

 of dumb, unoffending brute creatures. The tyrant Domi- 

 tian, wliile yet an infant, history informs us, foreshadowed 

 that diabolical character which subsequently terrified the 

 world, in his love of cruelty to dies and other insects, by 

 tearing off their wings and legs. A royal child, afterwards 

 Louis XIII. of France, once crushed beneath the heel of his 

 boot a little sparrow which had taken refuge in his bosom ; 

 seeing which, the good king his father, Henry IV., exclaimed 

 to his queen, " Wife, I pray that I may outlive that son, 

 else he will be sure to maltreat his mother." And the pre- 

 diction was verified ; for we know that Marie de Medicis died 

 at Cologne at sixty-eight years of age, exiled, and reduced 

 to the greatest extreme of misery, by her son. Henry IV. 

 jDroved a prophet. Moreover, at the siege of Montauban, 

 this same cruel child, now become a monarch and a man, 

 heartlessly stood by, and mimicked the dying contortions of 

 his Protestant prisoners. Hogarth, you may remember, in 

 his " Four Phases of Cruelty," makes the child that is repre- 

 sented as torturing a dog in the first picture, terminate his 

 career hy a murder in the last. Civilization has been aptly 

 compared to a fine diamond, which each succeeding genera- 

 tion polishes a side or angle of. Now, if this simile be cor- 

 rect, it follows, I think, as a natural consequence, that one of 

 these angles must represent humanity to the inferior animals ; 

 and that this social gem of ours can never be complete until 

 this one is rendered as resplendent as the rest. 



Upon the right bank of the Ganges stands a lofty and 

 beautiful monolith of red granite, bearing inscriptions there- 

 on, which, until lately, could not be interpreted. A learned 

 pundit has, however, deciphered them; and what do you 

 suppose they mean? Why, it is an ukase, made by the 

 reigning sovereign of the time, forbidding cruelt}' to ani- 

 mals. Think of it, that in distant India, twentj^-one hundred 

 years ago, the policy and humanity of mercy to God's inferior 

 creatures was proclaimed, while we in our time have delayed 

 making a similar provision until some dozen years ago ! But 

 we have gone to work in earnest, it must be admitted, to 



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