which in earlier times could not have been dreamed of. The savage animals
have, before the tread of the Lord of Creation, gradually disappeared.
Those creatures which show capacity for improvement have been cherished and
strengthened and humanized by their intercourse with man. The wild horse
has been brought under his protecting care, has become a faithful
ministering servant, rejoicing in his master's voice, fondled by his
master's children. The huge elephant has had his "half-reasoning" powers
turned into the faculties of a gentle, benevolent giant, starting aside
from his course to befriend a little child, listening with the docility of
a child to his driver's rebuke or exhortation. The light, airy, volatile
bird seems to glow with a new instinct of affection and of perseverance
under the shelter of the firm hand and eye of man. The dog, in all Eastern
nations, even under the Old Testament itself, represented as an outcast,
the emblem of all that was unclean and shameful, has, through the Gentile
Western nations, been admitted within the pale of human fellowship. Truly,
if man has thus, as it were, infused a soul into the dumb, lawless animals,
what a community of feeling, what tenderness should it require from him in
dealing with them. What a heartless, in one word, what an _inhuman_ spirit
is implied by any cruelty towards those, his dependents, his followers, his
grateful, innocent companions, placed under his charge by Him who is at
once their Father and ours. Remember our common origin and our common
infirmities. Remember that we are bound to feel for their hunger, their
thirst, their pains, which they share with us, and which we, the
controllers of their destiny, ought to alleviate by the means which our
advancing civilization enables us to use for ourselves. Remember how
completely each of us is a god to them, and, as a god, bound to them by
godlike duties.

DEAN STANLEY.