115 



they were turned up or cut by the ruthless spade, To such 

 an one, how pleasing must be the, assurance that his fears were 

 groundless. 



""Why should we, with morbid sensibility, insist upon 

 it that the writhing worm feels an agony of pain when 

 it is seized by the soaring bud, because we should suffer if 

 carried off in like manner by some gigantic roc or cannibal 

 Blunderbore; when reason, analogy, nature, all conspire to 

 tell us, if we would only read them rightly, that such is not 

 the case. It reminds me always of the despairing man, who 

 sang, or rather whined, 



" ' There 's such a charm in melancholy, 

 I would not, if I could, be gay.' 



" It has been objected, that pain is essentially necessary to 

 every animal, to enable it to escape from danger, or from a 

 threatened injury. This is, however, a gratuitous assumption ; 

 for, granting that some sensation is necessary, it need not 

 absolutely be a painful one. What produces pain in us, may 

 produce only a sensation no severer than that of tickling in 

 the lower animals • and any one who has experienced the two 

 in his own person, will know that the latter will produce a 

 greater amount of writhing than the former." 



