MR. HERBERT'S RECOLLECTIONS. 167 



vious day ; and that it had made and left such a painful 

 impression on his mind, that he could not reconcile it to his 

 conscience to continue to derive pleasure from a sport which 

 inflicted such cruel suffering." 



To realise the strength of the feeling that led to this re- 

 solve, we must remember how passionate was his love of 

 sport. We must recall the boy shooting his first snipe,* and 

 trembling with excitement so that he could hardly reload his 

 gun. Or think of such a sentence as, " Upon my soul, it is 

 only about a fortnight to the ' First,' then if there is a bliss 

 on earth that is it." f 



Another anecdote told by Mr. Herbert illustrates again his 

 tenderness of heart : 



" When at Barmouth, he and I went to an exhibition of 

 ' learned dogs.' In the middle of the entertainment one of 

 the dogs failed in performing the trick his master told him 

 to do. On the man reproving him, the dog put on a most 

 piteous expression, as if in fear of the whip. Darwin seeing 

 it, asked me to leave with him, saying, ' Come along, I can't 

 stand this any longer ; how those poor dogs must have been 

 licked.'" 



It is curious that the same feeling recurred to my father 

 more than fifty years afterwards, on seeing some perform- 

 ing dogs at the Westminster Aquarium ; on this occasion 

 he was reassured by the manager telling him that the dogs 

 were taught more by reward than by punishment. Mr. Herbert 

 goes on : " It stirred one's inmost depth of feeling to hear 

 him descant upon, and groan over, the horrors of the slave 

 trade, or the cruelties to which the suffering Poles were sub- 

 jected to at Warsaw. . . . These, and other like proofs have 

 left on my mind the conviction that a more humane or 

 tender-hearted man never lived." 



* ' Recollections,' p. 34. 



f Letter from C. Darwin to W. D. Fox. 



