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1. THE sufferings of the lower animals may, when out of sight, be out of mind. But, more than this, these sufferings may be in sight, and yet out of mind. This is strikingly exemplified in the sports of the field, in the midst of whose varied and animating bustle that cruelty which all along is present to the senses may not for one moment have been present to the thoughts.

2. There sits a somewhat ancestral dignity and glory on this favorite pastime of joyous old England; when the gallant knighthood, and the hearty yeomen, and the amateurs or virtuosos of the chase, and the full assembled jockeyship of half a province, muster together in all the pride and pageantry of their great emprise; and the panorama of some noble landscape, lighted up with autumnal clearness from an unclouded heaven, pours fresh exhilaration into every blithe and choice spirit of the scene; and every adventurous heart is braced and impatient for the hazards of the coming enterprise; and even the highbreathed coursers catch the general sympathy, and seem to fret in all the restiveness of their yet checked and irritated fire, till the echoing horn shall set them at liberty, — even that horn which is the knell of death to some trembling victim now brought forth out of its lurking-place to the delighted gaze, and borne down upon with the full and open cry of its ruthless pursuers.

3. Be assured that, amid the whole glee and fervency of this tumultuous enjoyment, there might not, in one single bosom, be aught so fiendish as a principle of naked and abstract cruelty. The fear which gives its lightning speed to the unhappy animal; the thickening horrors which, in the progress of exhaustion, must gather upon its flight; its gradually sinking energies, and at length the terrible certainty of that destruction which is awaiting it; that piteous cry which the ear can sometimes distinguish amid the deafening clamor of the blood-hounds as they spring exultingly upon their prey; the dread massacre and dying agonies of a creature so miserably torn, - all this weight of suffering, we admit, is not once sympathized with, but it is just because the suffering itself is not once thought of.

It touches not the sensibilities of the heart, but just because it is never present to the notice of the mind.

4. We allow that the hardy followers in the wild romance of this occupation,- we allow them to be reckless of pain. But this is not rejoicing in pain. Theirs is not the delight of the savage, but the apathy of unreflecting creatures. They are wholly occupied with the chase itself and its spirit-stirring accompaniments, nor bestow one moment's thought on the dread violence of that infliction upon sentient nature which marks its termination. It is the spirit of the competition, and it alone, which goads onward this hurrying career; and even he who, in at the death is foremost in the triumph, although to him the death itself is in sight, the agony of its wretched sufferer is wholly out of mind.

5. Man is the direct agent of a wide and continual distress to the lower animals; and the question is, Can any method be devised for its alleviation? On this subject that scriptural image is strikingly realized, "The whole inferior creation groaning and travailing together in pain" because of him. It signifies not to the substantive amount of the suffering whether this be prompted by the hardness of his heart, or only permitted through the heedlessness of his mind. In either way it holds true, not only that the arch-devourer man stands pre-eminent over the fiercest children of the wilderness as an animal of prey, but that, for his lordly and luxurious appetite, as well as for his service or merest curiosity and amusement, nature must be ransacked throughout all her elements.

6. Rather than forego the veriest gratifications of vanity, he will wring them from the anguish of wretched and illfated creatures; and whether for the indulgence of his bar

baric sensuality or barbaric splendor, can stalk paramount over the sufferings of that prostrate creation which has been placed beneath his feet. That beauteous domain whereof he has been constituted the terrestrial sovereign gives out so many blissful and benignant aspects; and whether we look to its peaceful lakes, or to its flowery landscapes, or its evening skies, or to all that soft attire. which overspreads the hills and the valleys, lighted up by smiles of sweetest sunshine, and where animals disport themselves in all the exuberance of gayety, this surely were a more befitting scene for the rule of clemency than for the iron rod of a murderous and remorseless tyrant.

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7. But the present is a mysterious world wherein we dwell. It still bears much upon its materialism of the impress of paradise. But a breath from the air of Pandemonium has gone over its living generations; and so "the fear of man and the dread of man is now upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea into man's hands are they delivered: every moving thing that liveth is meat for him; yea, even as the green herbs, there have been given to him all things." Such is the extent of his jurisdiction; and with most full and wanton license has he revelled among its privileges. The whole earth labors and is in violence because of his cruelties; and from the amphitheater of sentient nature there sounds in fancy's ear the bleat of one wide and universal suffering, a dreadful homage to the power of nature's constituted lord.

8. These sufferings are really felt. The beasts of the field are not so many automata without sensation, and just so constructed as to give forth all the natural signs and

expressions of it. Nature hath not practiced this universal deception upon our species. These poor animals just look, and tremble, and give forth the very indications. of suffering that we do. Theirs is the distinct cry of pain; theirs is the unequivocal physiognomy of pain.

9. They put on the same aspect of terror on the demonstrations of a menaced blow; they exhibit the same distortions of agony after the infliction of it. The bruise, or the burn, or the fracture, or the deep incision, or the fierce encounter with one of equal or superior strength, just affects them similarly to ourselves. Their blood circulates as ours; they have pulsations in various parts of the body like ours; they sicken, and they grow feeble with age, and finally they die, just as we do. They possess the same feelings; and, what exposes them to like suffering from another quarter, they possess the same instincts with our own species.

10. The lioness robbed of her whelps causes the wilderness to ring aloud with the proclamation of her wrongs; or the bird whose little household has been stolen fills and saddens all the grove with melodies of deepest pathos. All this is palpable even to the general and unlearned eye; and when the physiologist lays open the recesses of their system by means of that scalpel, under whose operation they just shrink and are convulsed as any living subject of our own species, there stands forth to view the same sentient apparatus, and furnished with the same conductors for the transmission of feeling to every minutest pore upon the surface.

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11. Theirs is an unmixed and unmitigated pain, the agonies of martyrdom without the alleviation of the hopes and the sentiments whereof they are incapable. When

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