56 THE PASSING OF WINTER 



towards the lower animals. This he denounces as 

 un- Chris tianlike and demoralising, on the theological 

 ground that these creatures have no rights, and that 

 man is as free to tear them in pieces or destroy them 

 as he is to ruin his own clothes or pull a peony to 

 pieces. Happily, matters have gone too far for any 

 such anthropocentric doctrine to find any echo in 

 Britain, through it is true that Christians have a 

 good deal still to learn from Mahommedans in this 

 respect, as anybody may observe by comparing street 

 scenes in Naples with those in Constantinople. Eng- 

 lish ladies of fashion have it much in their power to 

 promote the humane treatment of their feathered 

 fellow- creatures ; nor will they fail to do so when 

 they understand how to do it, without the slightest 

 sacrifice of grace or splendour in attire without even 

 adopting the rule of simplex munditiis. 



XVII 



Seldom is there a night so still that he who is abroad 

 The Passing or watching from an open window is not 

 of winter consc i ous o f an indefinable stir, it may be 

 among the treetops or upon the beach, among the 

 summer meadows or on the snowy hillside. Not the 

 wind, albeit that often gives a momentary sigh, nor the 

 going of beast and bird, nor the movement of men ; it 

 is something apart from these, intangible, like the 

 change upon a sleeping child before it wakes. It is as 

 if the spiritual sentries which we are fond to imagine 



