BIPEDS AND QUADRUPEDS. 147 



use ; dog-fighting, bear and badger-baiting are now 

 only encouraged by the low and profligate ; from 

 men addicted to such atrocities, nothing is to be 

 hoped from argument, representation, or appeal to 

 feeling ; we must allow them to entertain their own 

 predilections and opinions, and can only oppose 

 stern law to brutal inclination. 



It is true that the Romans, at their time the most 

 advanced of nations, encouraged and patronised 

 brutal exhibitions of various kinds ; but it must be 

 borne in mind that the Romans, the most warlike, 

 and at the same time most effeminate of nations, in 

 their different pursuits, were rude in comparison with 

 nations of the present day ; what would have been 

 termed heroic and praiseworthy in a Roman, cen- 

 turies ago, would be held as brutality, in any in- 

 habitant of a civilised nation of the present period. 



Even the former chiefs of clans in Scotland, though 

 their deeds may form a thrilling theme for the his- 

 torian, were, in truth, in their days half savage, A 

 Duke of Gordon of 1830, was no more resembled 

 by a Gordon of centuries back, than is a man of 



