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 LIBRARY | 
 
 UMtvtftsmr or 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO J
 
 Man surrounded by his Poor Relations.
 
 OUR POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 A PHILOZOIC ESS A Y 
 
 BY 
 
 COLONEL E. B. HAM LEY. 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 CHIEFLY BY ERNEST GRISET. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 J. E. TILTON AND COMPANY. 
 
 1872.
 
 what this world would be like if inhabited by no 
 other animal but man ? the earth without its 
 
 5
 
 6 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 four-footed and its creeping things, the sea and 
 the river vacant of their shy silvery gleams and 
 far-darting shadows, the air void of the choral 
 hum of insects and the song of birds ? What 
 a dismal hush in creation ! what a multitudi- 
 nous charm and delight wanting to the woods, 
 the fields, the shallows, and the deeps ! What 
 glory lost to the grass with the spotted lady- 
 birds, the mail-clad beetles, and the slender 
 grasshoppers ! What splendor gone from the 
 flower with the bronzed and fire-tipped bee that 
 fed on its heart, and the painted butterfly that 
 hovered above its petals ! How dull had been 
 Eden for Adam with nothing breathing but 
 Eve, and all the rest of creation inanimate 
 no voice but that of the wind or the thunder 
 no motion but the flow of the stream, the float- 
 ing of the clouds, the waving of the trees ! 
 The earth would have been silent as a picture ; 
 the forest and the plain, the mountain and the 
 lake, forlorn, tremendous, insupportable soli- 
 tudes solitudes that none would have sought, 
 since there could have been neither hunters nor 
 fishers, herdsmen nor shepherds. 
 
 In far other measure has the gift of life been 
 poured forth upon the earth. All the genera-
 
 Our Poor Relations. 7 
 
 tions of all the tribes of men are but a handful 
 to the myriads of creatures which to-day, to- 
 morrow, and every day, haunt land, air, and 
 water, till inanimate nature teems with the sen- 
 tient vitality that lends it all its interest and all 
 its significance. A leaf holds a family, a clod 
 a community, and there is material for the spec- 
 ulations of a lifetime in the tenants of the 
 neighboring meadow, and of the brook that 
 waters it. The unclouded heavens would be 
 oppressive in their vastness and loneliness but 
 for those frequent travellers high in air, the 
 rook, the raven, or rarer heron, that flap their 
 untiring way onwards till they melt again into 
 the blue depths out of which they grew upon 
 the sight. The bare white cliffs are no longer 
 barren when their clangorous population of 
 chough and kittiwake and daw are abroad in 
 the sunshine ; and the black storm-cloud, com- 
 ing up on the blast behind its veil of rain, gains 
 a beauty which before it had not, as it throws 
 into relief the white wing of the sea-gull. Nay, 
 in some countries where calm and sunshine are 
 more permanent conditions of the atmosphere 
 than here, we learn that the regions of air are 
 not only a highway, but a home. Sir Samuel
 
 8 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 Baker observes that when an animal is slain in 
 the Nubian wilderness, within a few seconds a 
 succession of birds, hitherto invisible, descend 
 on the prey, and always in the same order. 
 First the black-and-white crow arrives, then the 
 buzzard, then the small vulture, then the large 
 vulture, lastly the marabout stork. " I believe," 
 says Sir Samuel, " that every species keeps to 
 its own particular elevation, and that the atmos- 
 phere contains regular strata of birds of prey, 
 who, invisible to the human eye at their enor- 
 mous height, are constantly resting upon their 
 widespread wings and soaring in circles, watch- 
 ing with telescopic sight the world beneath." 
 It is like a tale born of Persian or Arabian fan- 
 tasy to hear that above the traveller in the 
 desert hangs a huge mansion, " impalpable to 
 feeling as to sight," with its basement, its first 
 and second floors, its attics, and its turrets ; or 
 (to vary the image) that the social system of the 
 atmosphere comprises its lower orders, its mid- 
 dle classes, and its upper ten thousand. 
 
 It is a pleasant, if somewhat extravagant, 
 fancy, to figure to one's self man dwelling amid 
 his fellow-tenants of the earth in completest 
 harmony, the friend and companion of some,
 
 Our Poor Relations. 9 
 
 the protector of others, the harmer of none, the 
 intelligent observer of all. Who shall say what 
 new unforeseen relations might not have been 
 established between us and our humble friends 
 on this basis of confidence and affection ? Who 
 shall say that they might not have revealed to 
 us that secret which they have guarded since 
 the creation the secret of their instincts and 
 their ways ; what their notions are of the 
 world, of each other, and of man ; and how far 
 they look before and after ? It was one of 
 Hawthorne's prettiest wild fancies, that Dona- 
 tello, the descendant of the old Fauns, and the 
 partial inheritor of their sylvan nature, still 
 held kinship with the untamed creatures of the 
 woods, and could draw them into communion 
 with him by the peculiar charm of his voice. 
 Every one who has domesticated some strange, 
 shy creature can testify to the wealth of char- 
 acter which it came to display in the ripening 
 warmth of intimacy ; and several naturalists 
 (by which term we are far from intending to 
 signify the dissectors of frogs, the scientific ex- 
 perimenters on the nerves and muscles of dogs, 
 or the impalers of beetles and butterflies) have 
 recorded their pleasant experiences of these
 
 IO Our Poor Relations. 
 
 connections. Thus one of them, in spite of 
 ancient prejudice and proverbial adjectives, has 
 elicited fine social qualities in a bear ; another 
 has owned a beaver of such intelligence that it 
 might almost have been persuaded to become a 
 Christian ; while Caroline Bowles, whose taste 
 in this particular we respect rather than like, 
 kept a toad (a practice which we had thought 
 to be peculiar to old ladies who are in league 
 with the devil), and grew so fond of the un- 
 promising associate as to celebrate its virtues 
 in verse. What diversity and distinctness of 
 character in the poet Cowper's three hares ! 
 Could any amount of hare-soup, civet de lievre, 
 jugged hare, or roast hare, that ever figured at 
 a century of city feasts, have made amends to 
 the world for the want of the affectionate record 
 of their social qualities ? Yet many a Puss, 
 Tiney, and Bess, as full of whim and play and 
 individuality as they, perishes unappreciated in 
 every day of cover-shooting, or is run into, in 
 the open, by heartless and undiscriminating 
 beagles. Especially in their early youth are 
 the four-footed peoples lovely and of good re- 
 port : not to mention such obvious examples as 
 the soft graces of kittens, the pretty, stiff frisk-
 
 Our Poor Relations. 1 1 
 
 ings of lambs, like toys in motion (all the lamb 
 family are as full of quaint fun as Charles him- 
 self), and the clumsy geniality of puppies, the 
 rule will be found elsewhere of pretty general 
 application. Young pigs are delightful their 
 gambols, and squeaky grunts, and pokings in 
 the straw, and relations with their mother and 
 brethren, are marked with a grave facetiousness 
 all their own, though the spectator who would 
 enjoy them must be careful to ignore the sensual 
 aldermanic life of the mature porker. Young 
 donkeys, on the other hand, are by so much the 
 more charming, as being invested with the pa- 
 thos (quite awanting to the pigling) of the fu- 
 ture hard existence that is pretty certain to 
 await each member of the race as a poor man's 
 drudge. Foxes, in private life, and apart from 
 their public merits as main supporters of a great 
 national institution, are full of estimable quali- 
 ties, as many a poacher who, watching for other 
 game, has noted Mrs. Reynard unbending in 
 the moonlight with her young family, might tes- 
 tify ; and a little fox, with his face full of a 
 grave, sweet intelligence, which is as yet unde- 
 based by the look of worldly astuteness con- 
 spicuous in after life, is one of the prettiest
 
 12 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 sights in the world. Domesticated, they de- 
 velop, in addition to their native sagacity, a 
 most affectionate attachment to those who are 
 kind to them ; and though, owing to personal 
 peculiarities, their society is most agreeable 
 when the visitor approaches them from wind- 
 ward, yet acquaintance with a fox will always 
 repay cultivation. Going further afield for ex- 
 amples of unobtrusive merit, what a wealth of 
 humor is comprised in the phrase, " a wilderness 
 of monkeys ! " What endless fun, what fresh 
 comedy, what brilliant farce, what infinity of 
 by-play and private jesting, quite beyond the 
 reach of our most popular comedians, is being 
 forever enacted in those leafy .theatres where 
 they hold their untiring revels ! How little are 
 they dependent on the stimulus of a sympa- 
 thetic audience, how free from the vulgarity of 
 playing at the gallery, how careless about split- 
 ting the ears of the groundlings, how careful 
 always to hold the mirror up to nature and to 
 man ! Hamlet could have given them no ad- 
 vice that would have been of service ; on the 
 contrary, they would have been spoiled by being 
 " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," 
 a metaphysical monkey, mooning over his bar-
 
 Our Poor Relations. 13 
 
 ren philosophy, would sit in dismal discord with 
 the surrounding fun. Even in captivity the 
 merry race cultivate the drama, and the audi- 
 ences about the great cages in the Jardin des 
 Plantes or our own Zoological, are never disap- 
 pointed in the performance. 
 
 It was on a Sunday last summer, that we 
 witnessed, in the monkey-house in the Regent's 
 Park, a piece, the serious cast of which was, on 
 Shakespearean principles, relieved by passages 
 of lighter matter. Perched on their poles en- 
 gaged in mutual friendly investigation, or swing- 
 ing airily on ropes, the community was unusu- 
 ally quiet, while a female monkey, not the least 
 of whose attractions was a roseate flush which 
 spread itself over part of her else russet-gray 
 person, was engaged in deep flirtation with a 
 cavalier whose nether-monkey was of a tender 
 green shading into gold. The impassioned Ro- 
 meo, chattering voluble protestations, followed 
 the coy but loquacious Juliet, while that lasciva 
 puella pelted him in retiring with orange-peel, 
 nutshells, and straws, till they arrived beneath a 
 branch along which lay extended another mon- 
 key, who watched the pair attentively. He may 
 have been a rival, like the County Paris, or a
 
 14 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 dissatisfied relative, like Tybalt, or possibly he 
 may have resented as an injury and a slight any 
 preference of other attractions to his own, for 
 he presented to the curious eye some embellish- 
 ments of brilliant azure. Be that as it may, 
 without the slightest warning he dropped like 
 a plummet on the enamoured pair, and, seizing 
 Romeo, bit him in his gorgeous hinder parts. 
 The injured swain, turning with an appalling 
 grin, grappled his assailant ; Juliet fled shriek- 
 ing, and her outcries, mingling with the noise 
 of combat, conveyed the tidings of the strife to 
 all the cage, and " spread the truth from pole to 
 pole." Thereupon all the other monkeys, leav- 
 ing their own private concerns, vaulted from 
 rope and perch towards the scene of action, 
 where, with shrill clamor, they precipitated 
 themselves on the combatants, and joined in a 
 general fray ; while an elderly and morose ba- 
 boon, delayed by age and infirmity, arrived 
 rather later, and, armed with a stick, belabored 
 all indiscriminately who came within his reach. 
 Shortly after, we beheld, in a neighboring cage, 
 a monkey, of dark, attenuated figure, clinging 
 with hands and feet, like a gigantic hairy spider, 
 to the wire roof, apparently absorbed in medita-
 
 Our Poor Relations. 15 
 
 tion, while his tail hung perpendicularly down 
 to the length of about a yard. This, appendage 
 offered irresistible attractions to a friend upon 
 a neighboring rope, who, after long and earnest- 
 ly surveying it as he swung, reached it in one 
 wild leap, and, grasping it with both hands, pro- 
 ceeded to use it as the vehicle of an animated 
 gymnastic performance. The sage above, no- 
 ways discomposed, slowly turned his head, and, 
 after a patronizing glance at the pendent acro- 
 bat, resumed the thread of his meditations. 
 Possibly this was intended as a practical illus- 
 tration of the feat known to logicians as " jump- 
 ing at a conclusion." But whether grave or 
 gay, the charm of undomesticated animals is, 
 that they show us their nature fresh from the 
 fashioner, unmodified by education, or the opin- 
 ion of others, or any influence which might 
 make them wish to seem other than they are ; 
 and they follow their sports, their matings, the 
 shaping of their abodes, their parental cares, 
 the purveying of their food, their slumbers, and 
 flights and perambulations, their relations to 
 their fellows, whether gregarious or solitary, 
 with absolute independence of all impulses ex- 
 cept those which inspired the first of their race.
 
 i6 
 
 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 The idea of a paradise of animals who move 
 without fear round the central figure of man, is 
 not altogether fanciful, for something like it has 
 been witnessed from time to time by lost crews, 
 or storm-driven mariners, who reach, Crusoe- 
 like, a haven in some hitherto unexplored prov- 
 ince of Ocean. Birds of strange plumage come 
 out to welcome the solitary figure in the boat, to 
 perch on the prow, and to herald its progress ; 
 it nears the shore of the far antarctic region, 
 
 amid a crowd of gamesome seals, like the car 
 of Amphitrite conducted by a procession of
 
 Our Poor Relations. 17 
 
 Tritons. On the sands sit sea-lions, gazing 
 with their solemn eyes at man, like conscript 
 fathers receiving a foreign envoy ; penguins 
 waddle in his path ; the greater and lesser alba- 
 tross come floating by, turning a bright, fearless 
 glance on him. Or, in warmer regions, dolphins 
 are his avant couriers ; at his approach, turtles 
 broad of back scarce quit their eggs in the sand 
 to crawl into the water ; the gaudy parrots, and 
 creamy, crested cockatoos, scream inquiry, not 
 indignation, from the branches ; the woodpeck- 
 er scarce pauses in his tapping ; the shining 
 dove . ceases not to woo his mate ; the apes 
 chatter a welcome, and grin not less affably 
 than many a host and hostess who desire to 
 give the guest a hospitable reception. We 
 have ourselves, in the depths of Canadian for- 
 ests, amid pines " hidden to the knees " in 
 snow, seen the white hare pause to look at us, 
 as she hopped past a few yards off ; the tree- 
 grouse, glancing downward from a branch close 
 by with an air of courteous inquiry ; and the 
 spruce-partridges never disturbing the order in 
 which they sat on the boughs, as our snow- 
 shoes crunched the crisp surface underneath 
 a confidence but ill requited ; for an Indian,
 
 1 8 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 who guided us in those trackless woods, ascend- 
 ing the tree, and beginning with the bird that 
 sat lowest, plucked off, by means of a stick and 
 a noose, several in succession, passing the fatal 
 loop round their necks with a skill worthy of 
 Calcraft. Not to us does this kind of tameness 
 seem " shocking," as Cowper thought it must 
 have seemed to lonely Crusoe, but rather de- 
 lightful, because proof of the innocence that 
 imagines no evil ; and very touching, because 
 it betrays the simple creature which one might 
 think it ought to protect. 
 
 In fact, the relations between man and his co- 
 tenants of the globe would have been altogether 
 delightful but for one unlucky circumstance, a 
 circumstance which, far from being inevitable or 
 natural, is one of the insoluble problems of the 
 earth, and has caused a terrible jar and discord 
 in creation, namely, the fact that one animal 
 is food for another. No doubt, as matters stand, 
 beasts and birds of prey must follow their na- 
 ture ; the tearing of flesh and the picking of 
 bones are the correlatives of fangs and grinders, 
 beaks and talons ; and the comparative anato- 
 mist is compelled to coincide with that practical 
 Yankee, who, being told that in the days of the
 
 Our Poor Relations. 19 
 
 millennium the lion and the lamb will lie down 
 together, said, " He expected the lamb would 
 lie down inside the lion." Nor is there any 
 sign of relaxation in the vigor with which man 
 continues to devour fish, flesh, and fowl ; and 
 no individual human stomach reaches maturity 
 without sacrificing whole hecatombs of victims 
 by the way. If we (the present writer) were to 
 make any pretence to a virtuous distaste for 
 flesh, we should justly be rebuked by the 
 thought of all the slayings and cookings that 
 our presence in the world has caused and will 
 yet cause. All the yet unborn, unlittered, and 
 unhatched creatures that will be trussed and 
 jointed, skewered, basted, roasted, boiled, grilled, 
 and served up, to keep our single soul and body 
 together, might very properly low, bleat, grunt, 
 gobble, quack, cackle, and chirp us the lie in 
 our throat. In particular might we be haunted 
 and humbled by the memory of our carnivo- 
 rous desires on that evening when, having 
 toiled all day on foot from Martigny up the 
 Great St. Bernard, we sat, hungry and weary, 
 a solitary guest, with one sad monk for host, in 
 the huge dining-hall of the Hospice. We were 
 hungry with the hunger of those snow-clad
 
 2O Our Poor Relations. 
 
 altitudes ; succulent visions of stew and cutlet 
 floated before our fancy ; and when an attend- 
 ant bore into the twilight-shadowed hall a tray 
 with many dishes, we blessed the pious mem- 
 ory of the sainted Bernard. Our gratitude 
 cooled a little with the soup, which seemed 
 to be compounded of grass and warm water : 
 the remains of some cold pudding, of a kind 
 suitable for infants, followed ; then some slices 
 of potato fried in oil ; then a ragout of the 
 green products of the Italian ditches ; till at 
 length, in the growing darkness, a plate was 
 placed before us, on which glimmered some 
 small brown patches which might be diminu- 
 tive cutlets, or sliced- kidneys, or possibly bits 
 of baked meat. Into the nearest we plunged 
 our fork shade of Dalgetty, it was a stewed 
 prune ! A dried apple, we believe, concluded 
 the repast, but we did not eat it. As to grace, 
 Amen stuck in our throat ; and we had rather 
 not repeat the epithets which we breathed to 
 our pillow that night in honor of the canonized 
 founder of the feast. Nor among our gastro- 
 nomic recollections should we omit the time 
 when, on a foreign strand, where we had sub- 
 sisted for some days chiefly on the cabbages of
 
 Our Poor Relations. 21 
 
 the country, and were lying sick and jaundiced 
 and void of all desire for food, in our tent, we 
 were driven by some strange perverse impulse 
 to devise an infinite number of bills of fare, com- 
 posed of the choicest viands, to be partaken by 
 the choicest guests, whenever we should again 
 sit in the cheerful warmth of a certain club in 
 Pall Mall ; visions since in great part realized.. 
 When, therefore, we argue that the juxtaposi- 
 tion of the words " animal food " expresses a 
 disastrous condition of our existence, the can- 
 did reader will understand that we make no pre- 
 tence to have discovered an alternative, or to 
 be exempt from the common misfortune. 
 
 To a race of vegetarian men surrounded by 
 vegetarian animals herds from which they 
 demanded only milk, flocks whose sole tribute 
 was their fleece, and poultry which supplied 
 nothing but eggs to the board the idea of de- 
 priving creatures of life in order to eat them 
 would probably seem monstrous and repulsive. 
 But custom will reconcile us to anything ; the 
 Fans (an unprejudiced African tribe) feast on 
 their nearest relatives with as little disgust as 
 we on a haunch or a sirloin ; and if bills of fare 
 prevailed among that interesting people, a rot
 
 22 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 of aged grandfather, an entr&e of curried aunt, 
 or sucking-nephew's head en tortue, would be as 
 much matters of course as our ordinary dishes. 
 .But notwithstanding the omnivorous conforma- 
 tion of the human teeth, and the all-assimila- 
 tive faculty of the human stomach, it is scarcely 
 to be imagined that man, placed in a paradise 
 of roots and fruits, herbs and grain, honey and 
 spices, milk and wine, would have originated of 
 himself the idea of killing and eating animals. 
 He may have been first corrupted by the bad 
 example of the carnivora. The spectacle of a 
 tiger rending a kid, or an eagle a pigeon, may 
 have habituated him to connect the ideas of 
 slaughter and food ; next, his imitative propen- 
 sities may have kindled the desire to perform 
 the process himself ; and, the imagination thus 
 depraved, any remaining scruples would speed- 
 ily vanish, in time of dearth, before the impulse 
 of a craving stomach. But however the cus- 
 tom may have arisen, we are not left in any 
 doubt as to the dietary habits of our primeval 
 ancestors. The earliest trace of man on the 
 earth is the flint weapon with which he slew 
 the bear, the deer, and the beaver, whose bones 
 strew the site of his dwellings. His first gar-
 
 Our Poor Relations. 23 
 
 ments were torn from the backs they grew 
 on. His first business was the chase. Natural 
 philosophers tell us that a habit, accidental at 
 first, grows, in the course of transmission, into 
 the nature, and becomes a characteristic. It was 
 perhaps in this way that the germ of destruc- 
 tiveness, implanted by instant and ever-pressing 
 necessity in the aboriginal breast, struck such 
 deep root, that, in all succeeding ages, every 
 corner of the inhabited earth has been a sham- 
 bles, and the rest of animated creation has been 
 compelled to accept from man either subjection 
 or persecution persecution often pushed even 
 to extermination. In the pride of that power 
 which, through the faculty of speech, man pos- 
 sesses, of combining forces and transmitting 
 knowledge, he has exercised ruthlessly his do- 
 minion over the beast of the field and the fowl 
 of the air. Wherever he has held sway, there 
 have all other creatures drawn their painful 
 breath in subjection, unchampioned and unpit- 
 ied. If in that imaginary paradise of animals 
 which we have already sketched, we simply in- 
 troduce the figure of a NATIVE, the whole scene 
 changes. That lean, low-browed, flat-nosed car- 
 icature of humanity, more like a painter's lay
 
 24 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 figure than a sculptor's model full of propensi- 
 ties much viler than those of the animals around 
 him selfish, remorseless, faithless, treacherous 
 is monarch of all he surveys. The birds have 
 learnt the power of the poisoned arrow the 
 beasts have a wholesome dread of the ambush 
 and the snare. That bronze-colored being, dis- 
 tinguished from the ape chiefly by superior ma- 
 levolence and articulate speech, walks surround- 
 ed by a wide circle of fear. The creatures 
 around him have learnt, and taught their young, 
 the lesson that he is as malignant as he is pow- 
 erful. Only give him time, and he will depopu- 
 late whole regions of their animals. The gigan- 
 tic Moa no longer stalks over the hills of New 
 Zealand. The moose disappears from the east 
 of the American continent as the buffalo from 
 the west. South Africa, that used to teem with 
 wild herds, crowding the wide landscape up to 
 the horizon, and astounding the traveller with 
 the magnificent spectacle of tribes of antelopes, 
 zebras, and giraffes hiding the plain, elephants 
 and rhinoceroses browsing securely amid the 
 clumps of trees, and hippopotamuses swarming 
 in the rivers, has, since the negroes were sup- 
 plied with guns, been almost swept of its game,
 
 Our Poor Relations. 25 
 
 and in some parts not only have the birds dis- 
 appeared, but the very moles and mice are grow- 
 ing scarce. In fact, in all lands the savage gluts 
 himself with slaughter. Nor is his civilized 
 brother behind him in the propensity to destroy, 
 which nothing but the interest of proprietorship 
 avails to check. Everywhere it is absolutely a 
 capital crime to be an unowned creature. Dar- 
 win tells us that " when the Falkland Islands 
 were first visited by man, the large wolf-like 
 dog (Canis antarcticus} fearlessly came to meet 
 Byron's sailors, who, mistaking their ignorant 
 curiosity for ferocity, ran into the water to 
 avoid them ; even recently, a man, by holding a 
 piece of meat in one hand and a knife in the 
 other, could sometimes stick them at night." 
 Beautiful attitude of humanity ! In those parts 
 of America where game-laws do not exist, the 
 game has almost disappeared ; in France the 
 small birds have been destroyed, to the great joy 
 and prosperity of the insects and caterpillars ; in 
 England the interests of game-preserving have 
 proscribed the owl, the falcon, the eagle, the 
 weasel, and a host of other tenants of the woods. 
 Generations ago the bustard had vanished from 
 our downs, and within the memory of man the
 
 26 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 last pair of wheatears were shot in Sussex. 
 The act which has of late come to be stigma- 
 tized as " bird-murder," still, in rural districts, 
 casts a halo of glory round the perpetrator ; and 
 we frequently read in provincial papers how 
 " Mr. James Butcher, gamekeeper at Longears, 
 lately shot a fine specimen of the golden eagle ; " 
 or how "our respected fellow-townsman, Mr. 
 Noodle, killed, last Wednesday, the only hoopoe 
 that has visited this part of the country for 
 many years." Nightingales, so common in the 
 south of England, have not spread so far west- 
 ward as Devonshire ; and an idiot once wrote 
 to the papers to announce that he had just 
 succeeded in killing one which had been guilty 
 of straying within the confines of that county, 
 " as it was singing on the top of a thorn." 
 Sometimes, in distant seas, new tracts of coast 
 have been discovered abounding in seals, and 
 straightway crews of enterprising mariners have 
 arrived armed with spears and clubs, who have 
 wallowed in slaughter, never ceasing to stab 
 and strike till all that hapless and harmless 
 life was extinct, no tenants again forever lend- 
 ing cheer to those desolate shores, the gray, 
 lonely sea no more rippled by their sports.
 
 Our Poor Relations. 27 
 
 Wherever there is no law for the river or the 
 lake, the inhabitants of the flood disappear 
 even the countless tribes of the ocean are being 
 rapidly thinned by the insatiate rapacity of man. 
 But not for his bodily needs alone has the 
 human animal been so lavish in destroying 
 others. His spiritual interests have also de- 
 manded much of that kind of prodigality. A 
 devil, under one name or another, lies at the root 
 of many religions ; and many, in their infancies, 
 have recognized the duty of propitiating the un- 
 seen powers by sacrifice. Deeply convinced, 
 and with good reason, of the tremendous power 
 of evil in human affairs ; feeling in his own lot 
 how irresistible is the force of malignant influ- 
 ences, how futile his efforts to evade them, 
 man has soon learned to associate the super- 
 natural power which he dreads, with delight in 
 inflicting pain ; and, accustomed to slay crea- 
 tures for his own wants, he next conceives the 
 idea of slaying them for the satisfaction of his 
 sanguinary gods. In most lands the supplica- 
 tions of the savage to his deity are written in 
 blood ; and his petitions, often foolish and often 
 wicked, are thought to be more palatable if they 
 ascend in the smoke of burnt-offerings. As
 
 28 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 civilization advances, sacrifice grows more cere- 
 monial butchery becomes a priestly function ; 
 and the ancient world was filled with blood- 
 stained altars, and the mythology of its peoples 
 with prescribed modes of reverential slaughter, 
 and the assignment to particular deities of par- 
 ticular victims. It was natural that the idea of 
 propitiation by vicarious suffering should extend 
 till it included man himself; and had the oxen, 
 and lambs, and kids, and birds, whose fellows 
 bled so constantly as votive offerings, been capa- 
 ble of sharing the strictly human pleasure of 
 gratified vindictiveness, they would have found 
 ample opportunity for exulting in the spectacle 
 of men sacrificed by their fellows. " Moloch, 
 horrid king," has been worshipped, though not 
 always under that name, in many lands, and in 
 many ages ; his grinning image has looked down 
 on Druids with their wicker idols filled with 
 victims, and on Aztec priests laying hearts yet 
 beating on his altar-stone. Even in our day, 
 his votary the Thug makes assassination the 
 chief article of religion, and the king of Dahomey 
 floats his consecrated canoe in human blood. 
 There was a profound meaning, and one applica- 
 ble to the history of our race, in Hogarth's repre-
 
 Our Poor Relations, 29 
 
 sentation of different stages in atrocity, where the 
 hero, beginning with cruelty, ends with murder. 
 Nevertheless, in all his slayings and his sac- 
 rifices, man has had standing between him and 
 reprobation the plea of the hard conditions of 
 life, which rendered his acts natural and neces- 
 sary, and therefore not degrading. Even when 
 the chase, as in the great huntings of the Asiat- 
 ic monarchs, left the plain laden with carcasses, 
 this was still only the excess of a propensity 
 easy to be justified. But perhaps, in course of 
 time, the habit of looking on the whole animal 
 world as absolutely subject to the convenience 
 of man, and of regarding the infliction of death 
 with indifference, developed a latent germ in 
 our mysterious nature, whereupon a new human 
 quality namely, CRUELTY sprang up and 
 greatly flourished. No doubt it had, in the 
 congenial soil of individual human breasts, in all 
 times found its habitat : natures partaking so 
 much more of the demon than the god as to 
 find enjoyment in the contemplation of pain, 
 must always have been but too plentiful. But 
 in course of time this poisonous offspring of a 
 bad heart came, in gardeners' language, to be 
 " bedded out " in national institutions, such as
 
 30 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 the Flavian and other amphitheatres, our owrr 
 bear-baitings, bull-baitings, badger-baitings, rat- 
 killings, and cock-fights, the arenas of Eastern 
 princes,, and the bull-rings of Spain ; and whole 
 peoples were trained in the main doctrine of 
 devil-worship namely, that it is delightful to 
 inflict or to witness agony. All the aid which 
 grandeur of architecture, pomp of ceremonial, the 
 sanction of authority, and the keen expectation 
 and high-strung interest which are engendered 
 in the holiday assemblies of multitudes, could 
 lend to develop cruelty and quench humanity, 
 was afforded by these great spectacles. Rome 
 transferred to the huge circus, on these occa- 
 sions, her statecraft, her priesthood, her beauty, 
 her lofty patrician airs and graces, her jolly 
 plebeian merriment ; fresh garlands, new togas, 
 gay girdles, rich robes, and brilliant gems, made 
 the wide sweep of the amphitheatre a circle of 
 splendor. Into the sand-strewn space below 
 crowded the bewildered inhabitants of the forest 
 and the desert ^^ the slow-stalking elephant, the 
 giraffe with its towering form and gentle eyes, 
 the sleek slinking tiger, the sturdy undaunted 
 boar, the plumed ostriches hurrying hither and 
 thither in search of an outlet. Brilliant thus
 
 Our Poor Relations. 31 
 
 far the spectacle but interesting to " those 
 bold Romans" only for its promise of slaughter ; 
 and their enjoyment was incomplete till the 
 bright fur was dabbled in blood, the huge forms 
 still in death, the feathers strewn on the sand ; 
 and then, from full and grateful hearts, they ap- 
 plauded the imperial purveyor of the sport, the 
 good old monarch Tiberius, who went home to 
 spend the evening in torturing some slaves, or 
 the most sweet youth Domitian, who had been 
 killing flies in his palace all the morning. And 
 in the Plazas de Toros of Ronda, Seville, or 
 Madrid, the modern spectator may realize no 
 small portion of the magnificence of the amphi- 
 theatres of the old world, and may see, joyous 
 and eager as ever, the spirit that delights in 
 blood. This consecration of cruelty could not 
 but react on the people ; torture was a refined, 
 and at the same time a cheap, pleasure ; pov- 
 erty itself, debarred from such luxuries as ele- 
 phants and ostriches, could at least procure 
 cats, rats, birds, and frogs ; and wherever there 
 was a defenceless animal and a few ingenuous 
 youth, there was a small Colosseum. It was 
 natural that a people thus trained should de- 
 mand, for the full satisfaction of their desires, 
 the blood of gladiators and captives.
 
 32 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 No longer sacrificing to the ancient gods, we 
 still lay living offerings on the shrine of the 
 chief divinity in modern mythology namely, 
 Science. The most virtuous among us agree 
 (not without a certain air of pious satisfaction 
 at the supposed necessity) that it is lawful to 
 dissect live animals for the benefit of humanity. 
 Where the sanctioning law is to be found we 
 know not, and it was certainly made without 
 reference to the parties principally concerned, 
 which seems hardly consonant with the spirit 
 of modern legislation. It may, however, be 
 granted, that when some great discovery is the 
 result, the wrong may be, if not justified, ex- 
 cused that, when Bell succeeds in demon- 
 strating the functions of the brain, we may 
 agree not to inquire too closely into the number 
 of living creatures whose nerves of motion and 
 sensation were laid bare and pricked with nee- 
 dles during the investigation. Neither can we 
 altogether condemn that discoverer when we 
 find him preparing to procure a monkey on 
 which to practise the operation that goes by 
 his name (Bell's, not the monkey's), for the cure 
 of squinting though, of course, the monkey 
 would not care if the whole human race squint-
 
 Our Poor Relations. 33 
 
 ed. For a lover to adore a nymph who squints 
 to sit in her presence in a kind of cross-fire 
 from eyes which look all ways at once, like the 
 muzzles of rifles at a Volunteer review to be- 
 lieve that she is contemplating him, when she 
 is gazing tenderly at his rival, and to suspect 
 that she is ogling his rival when he is himself 
 the sole object of her erratic glances, is a sit- 
 uation so full of anxiety and doubt that we rec- 
 ommend it to the notice of our minor poets ; 
 while the joy of the swain at finding that an 
 operation has brought the vision of the beloved 
 one into the paths of rectitude, and that he can 
 now bask confidently in the focus of her looks, 
 may well compensate for some slight inconven- 
 ience to the subject of the original experiment. 
 On such grounds we may condone the practices 
 of Bell ; but after excepting a few great names, 
 we fear there are still, throughout the surgical 
 and veterinary professions, numerous diligent 
 inquirers, who, without the intellect necessary 
 to penetrate the secrets of science, are engaged 
 in the pursuit of delusions, or of crotchets, or 
 of matters unimportant if true, and on such 
 grounds do not hesitate to submit animals to 
 the most prolonged and horrible tortures. The 
 3
 
 34 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 professional gentleman who is known to be en- 
 gaged in such practices may very fairly be sus- 
 pected of indulging a taste under the sanction 
 of a duty ; for it is hardly to be believed that 
 anybody who did not enjoy vivisection for its 
 own sake would submit his nature to what 
 would be such violence, unless under the pres- 
 sure of a very exceptionally powerful motive. 
 The miscreants of the veterinary colleges of 
 Lyons and Alfort, for example, who habitually 
 performed many most terrible operations, some 
 of them of no possible application as remedies, 
 on the same living horse, and who warmly re- 
 sented interference, must have found a horrid 
 relish in their vile vocation. In a letter pub- 
 lished in a journal devoted to the interests of 
 animals, we find one of the principal surgeons 
 
 of the Hotel Dieu, M. le Docteur M (we 
 
 are sorry we cannot give his honorable name), 
 reported as saying that studies and experiments 
 are always made on living animals ; and that 
 there is a class of men who live by catching 
 stray dogs and selling them to be operated on, 
 five or six operations being often performed on 
 the same animal. " Sometimes," said the Doc- 
 tor, " I have taken pity upon the poor brutes ;
 
 Page 35-
 
 Our Poor Relations. 35 
 
 they showed so much intelligence, and seemed 
 to think I was operating upon them to do them 
 good. In such cases I have occasionally kept 
 them, but ustially I turn tliem into the street? 
 Is it uncharitable to hope that the next dog 
 operated on may be rabid, and may bite this 
 scientific inquirer ? There is a well-known 
 piteous case, too, of an English vivisector who 
 operated on his own dog while it licked the 
 hand that continued to dissect it. 
 
 But there is yet another class of these vota- 
 ries of science, called Naturalists, to whom no 
 kind of creature that can be classified comes 
 amiss as a victim, from a butterfly to a hippo- 
 potamus. Armed sometimes with a rifle, some- 
 times less expensively with a pin, they go forth 
 into strange lands to collect what they call the 
 " fauna." Millions of moths, before they have 
 fluttered out half their brief existence in the 
 sunshine, are secured by these sportsmen, and 
 impaled in boxes. Lizards and other reptiles 
 suspected of differing from the rest of their 
 race, are put to death without mercy. The 
 rarity of various birds, and the splendor of their 
 plumage, are held to be sufficient grounds for 
 their execution. So earnest in their pursuit
 
 36 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 are these gentlemen, that we have sometimes, 
 when reading their own accounts of their do- 
 ings, suspected that they would have scrupled 
 little to add a stray Native now and then to 
 their collection, provided they did not thereby 
 expose themselves to the penalties for murder. 
 We will here give some extracts from the re- 
 cent work of a naturalist, which is in many 
 respects agreeable and entertaining, premising 
 that the "Mias" who figures in them is a gigan- 
 tic ape (the orang-outang, we believe), a native 
 of Borneo, living for the most part inoffensive- 
 ly on the products of the woods ; and that only 
 a single case is quoted in the book of any of 
 the race having injured mankind, in which one 
 that was intercepted in its retreat to a tree, and 
 stabbed with spears and hacked with axes, re- 
 sented these playful aggressions so far as to 
 bite one of its assailants in the arm. This is 
 the account of the result of a great many shots 
 fired by the naturalist at a Mias who was 
 making off through the branches of the tall 
 trees : " On examination we found that he 
 had been dreadfully wounded. Both legs were 
 broken, one hip-joint and the root of the spine 
 completely shattered, and two bullets were
 
 Our Poor Relations. 37 
 
 found flattened in his neck and jaws! Yet he 
 was still alive when he fell." 
 
 Another of these subjects of scientific inves- 
 tigation was thus treated : 
 
 " Two shots caused this animal to lose 'his hold, but 
 he hung for a considerable time by one hand, and then 
 fell flat on his face, and was half buried in the swamp. 
 For several minutes he lay groaning and panting, and 
 we stood close round, expecting every breath to be his 
 last. Suddenly, however, by a violent effort, he raised 
 himself up, causing us all to step back a yard or two, 
 when, standing nearly erect, he caught hold of a small 
 tree, and began to ascend it. Another shot through the 
 back caused him to fall down dead. A flattened bullet 
 was found in his tongue, having entered the lower part 
 of the abdomen, and completely traversed the body, frac- 
 turing the first cervical vertebra. Yet it was after this 
 fearful wound that he had risen and begun climbing with 
 considerable facility." 
 
 This was the fate of another of these unfor- 
 tunates : 
 
 " We found a Mias feeding in a very lofty durion tree, 
 and succeeded in killing it after eight shots. Unfor- 
 tunately it remained in the tree, hanging by its hands; 
 and we were obliged to leave it and return home, as it 
 was several miles off. As I felt pretty sure it would fall 
 during the night, I returned to the place early the next 
 morning, and found it on the ground beneath the tree. 
 To my astonishment and pleasure, it appeared to be a 
 different kind from any I had yet seen." 
 
 Perhaps the reader, whose sensibilities are as 
 yet unaffected by companionship with natural-
 
 38 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 ists, may think that these are very shocking 
 penalties for the crime of being a Mias, and of 
 possessing an anatomical structure much coveted 
 by museums ; and may feel disposed (parodying 
 Madame Roland) to exclaim, " O Science, what 
 deeds are done in thy name ! " 
 
 In those days (says an Oriental fabulist in the 
 least known of his apologues which we have 
 taken the trouble to translate from the original 
 Arabic), when certain sages were acquainted 
 with the language of animals (an accomplish- 
 ment which they inherited from Solomon, who 
 is well known to have added this to his other 
 stores of wisdom), it naturally came to pass 
 that, not only did men know something of the 
 thoughts of birds and beasts, but to birds and 
 beasts were imparted some of the ideas of men, 
 and, among others, that of a devil or malignant 
 power who is the source of evil. Much im- 
 pressed with the reality of the ills of life, and 
 the expediency of lessening them, the fowls and 
 brutes resolved to seek some means of propi- 
 tiating the being who exercised over them so 
 baleful an influence. Accordingly they held a 
 convocation to debate the matter, and finding
 
 Our Poor Relations. 39 
 
 it necessary, as a first step, to gain a more 
 definite idea of the nature and attributes of/ this 
 malevolent Power, different classes of animals 
 were called on to describe the ills they chiefly 
 suffered from, that their misfortunes might thus 
 be traced to a common source. The Lion, as 
 the representative of beasts of prey, declared 
 that he would have nothing to complain of, game 
 being plentiful, were it not for the accursed 
 hunters with their devices, which left him no 
 peace. The Antelope said that the class of 
 wild creatures to which he belonged would be 
 content to match their own vigilance and swift- 
 ness against the craft and strength of their four- 
 footed persecutors, but that they could not con- 
 tend with the terrible ingenuity of man, who, in 
 his pursuit of them, had even called other ani- 
 mals to his aid ; and that, whereas a beast of 
 prey molested them only for the satisfaction of 
 his individual needs, man was insatiate in slaugh- 
 ter. The birds were of one consent that they 
 feared little the hostility of animals, but that 
 snares and traps rendered their lives a burden 
 by causing them to distrust every mouthful they 
 ate. The Sheep, as the mouthpiece of a large
 
 4O Our Poor Relations. 
 
 class of domestic animals, declared that he was 
 well cared for, fed, and protected from harm, but 
 that he paid a heavy price for these favors by liv- 
 ing in constant expectation of the inevitable and 
 extremely premature moment when he would be- 
 come mutton. The Horse averred that he also 
 was well cared for, and that, moreover, his life, 
 unlike the sheep's, was insured so long as he had 
 health and strength, but (motioning with his 
 muzzle towards the saddle-marks on his back 
 and the spur-galls on his flanks) that his life was 
 deprived of savor by being one of perpetual 
 slavery. The Dog said that his lot might perhaps 
 seem the happiest of all, in being the compan- 
 ion of his master, but that in reality he had 
 more to lament than any of them, since protec- 
 tion was only granted to him on condition that 
 he should aid in the destruction of his fellow- 
 brutes. A great mass of information having 
 been accumulated in this way, the assembly 
 seemed still as far as ever from discovering the 
 object of its inquiry, when an ancient Raven, of 
 vast repute for wisdom, hopping to a loftier 
 branch, desired to speak. " My friends," he 
 croaked, " what we are seeking lies under our 
 very noses. I perceive what this power of evil
 
 Ozir Poor Relations. 41 
 
 is, and how futile will be all attempts to propi- 
 tiate it, for it is clear that Man, insatiate Man, 
 is our Devil ! " 
 
 Yet, in truth, is Nature often no less harsh 
 than man in dealing with her inarticulate off- 
 spring. To them (as indeed to us) she shows 
 fitful favor, capricious severity. In one zone 
 animal life seems all happiness, in another all 
 misery. It is a pleasure to a care-laden, tax- 
 hampered citizen merely to think how, under 
 certain conditions of adaptation to climate, whole 
 tribes of creatures, countless in number, revel
 
 42 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 in the opulence and prodigality of food, of air, 
 of sunshine, and of sport ; the task of support- 
 ing life is so easy as to leave them infinite leisure 
 for enjoying it ; they are as Sandwich Island- 
 ers, into whose simple, untaught methods of 
 making existence pleasure, no missionary can 
 ever introduce the jarring element of a half- 
 awakened conscience. As Shelley heard in the 
 notes of the skylark "clear, keen joyance," "love 
 of its own kind," and " ignorance of pain," and 
 exhausted himself in sweet similitudes for the 
 small musician that " panted forth a flood of 
 rapture so divine," so, had we his gift, we 
 might discern elements as rare in the lives of 
 various races, but which, owing to the accident 
 of wanting a grammatical language, they are un- 
 able to reveal to us. What a descriptive poem 
 must the Eagle have in him, who, sailing in ether, 
 miles beyond our ken, sees earth beneath him 
 as a map, and through gaps in the clouds catches 
 blue glimpses of the ocean and yellow gleams of 
 the desert ! Often, while resting on his great 
 pennons in the serene blue, has he seen a thun- 
 der-storm unroll its pageant beneath him, and 
 watched the jagged lightning as it darted earth- 
 ward. (Tom Campbell was once taken up by
 
 Our Poor Relations. 43 
 
 an eagle near Oran, and, coming safely down, 
 described what he had seen in immortal verse.) 
 Those hermit birds which live by lonely streams 
 in wild valleys, like the Ousel and the King- 
 fisher, must be full of delicate fancies fancies 
 very different from those, which must be very 
 delicate also, that visit the nomads of the air, 
 such as the Swallow, the Cuckoo, and the Quail, 
 with their large experience of countries, and 
 climes, and seas. How delicious, how ever fresh, 
 how close to nature, the life of a Sea-fowl whose 
 home is in some cliff fronting the dawn, and 
 who, dwelling always there, yet sees infinite 
 variety in the ever-changing sky and sea 
 flapping leisurely over the gentle ripples in the 
 morning breeze alighting in the depths which 
 mirror the evening sky so placidly as to break 
 into circles round the dip of his wing pierc- 
 ing, like a ray, the silver haze of the rain-cloud 
 
 lost in the dusky bosom of the squall blown 
 about like a leaf on the storm which strews the 
 shore with wrecks and, next day, rising and 
 falling in the sunshine on the curves of the swell ! 
 Turning from air to earth, the very spirit of Tell 
 
 the spirit of independence bred of the pure 
 sharp air of mountain solitudes and the stern
 
 44 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 aspect of the snow-clad pinnacles must live 
 in the Chamois, who seeks his food and pastime 
 on the verge of immeasurable precipices. Grand 
 also, but infinitely different, the solitary empire 
 of some shaggy lord of the wilderness on whose 
 ease none may intrude, and who stalks through 
 life surrounded by images of flight and terror 
 glowing always with the gloomy rage of the 
 despot a despot careless of hereditary right, 
 elected by nobody's suffrage, relying on no 
 strength but his own, and absolutely indifferent 
 to public opinion. Below these lofty regions of 
 animal grandeur, but quite within the circle of 
 comfort and happiness, dwell an infinite number 
 of creatures, some finding their feliciiy in flocks 
 or herds, some in retiring into strict domestic 
 seclusion with the mate of their choice, some in 
 exercising the constructive faculties with which 
 they are so mysteriously and unerringly endowed. 
 The coneys are but a feeble folk, yet they may 
 have their own ideas of household suffrage in 
 those close burrows of theirs, and could doubt- 
 less chronicle much that would be valuable 
 to parents while bringing up about fifteen fam- 
 ilies a year. Rats and mice, and such small 
 deer, lead lives of great variety, observation, and
 
 Our Poor Relations. 45 
 
 adventure, though precarious and mostly tragi- 
 cal in their ending, the poison and the steel 
 being as fatal to them as to the enemies of the 
 Borgias, or claimants to disputed successions in 
 the middle ages. And again, beneath these, 
 too insignificant to excite the hostility or cupid- 
 ity of man, are infinite populations, creeping 
 and winged things, whose spacious home is the 
 broad sunshine ; so that, viewed from a favor- 
 able standpoint, every nook and corner of the 
 world, its cellars, garrets, lumber-rooms, and 
 all, seem to overflow with busy delight or quiet 
 happiness. 
 
 But who would recognize in this kind and 
 liberal mother, so lavish of pleasures to her off- 
 spring, the stern power that makes the lives of 
 whole races sheer misery ? Can any one fancy 
 what it must be to have habitual dread forming 
 an element of life, and transmitted through 
 countless generations till it finds expression in 
 habits of vigilance, of stealth, and of evasion, 
 that we take for peculiar instincts ? This pow- 
 er of communicating the results of experience, 
 and of circulating throughout a whole species 
 the fear of a known evil, is one of the most in- 
 explicable faculties of unreasoning and inartic-
 
 46 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 ulate creatures. A naturalist, well qualified to 
 form an opinion, believes, we are told, that the 
 life of all beasts in their wild state is an exceed- 
 ingly anxious one ; that " every antelope in 
 South Africa has literally to run for its life once 
 in every one or two days upon an average, and 
 that he starts or gallops under the influence of 
 a false alarm many times in a day." Our own 
 fields and woods are full of proscribed creatures 
 which must feel as if they had no business in 
 creation, and only draw their breath by stealth, 
 vanishing in earth, or air, or water, at the shad- 
 ow of an imagined enemy. In those lands of 
 the sun where vegetation is most luxuriant, and 
 food consequently most assured, there is yet a 
 kind of privation as terrible as hunger. "At 
 Koobe," says Livingstone, describing his expe- 
 riences in Africa, " there was such a mass of 
 mud in the pond, worked up by the wallowing 
 rhinoceros to the consistency of mortar, that 
 only by great labor could we get a space cleared 
 at one side for the water to ooze through and 
 collect in for the oxen. Should the rhinoceros 
 come back, a single roll in the great mass we 
 had thrown on one side would have rendered 
 all our labor vain. It was therefore necessary
 
 Our Poor Relations. 47 
 
 for us to guard the spot by night. On these 
 great flats, all around, we saw in the white sul- 
 try glare herds of zebras, gnus, and occasionally 
 buffaloes, standing for days, looking wistfully 
 towards the wells for a share of the nasty wa- 
 ter." And in other parts of the African conti- 
 nent, when the fierceness of the summer has 
 dried up the rivers, the amphibia, great and 
 small, collect in uncongenial crowds in the pools 
 left along the deeper parts of the channel ; and 
 the land animals, the deer, the apes, the birds, 
 stoop hastily and furtively to snatch insufficient 
 draughts from the depths where lurk so many 
 ravenous foes. Then, in colder lands, what 
 wretchedness does winter bring when the 
 snow puts an end to the livelihood of all the 
 tribes which seek sustenance on the earth, and 
 the frost mocks the misery of those whose food 
 is in the marsh or the pool ! The frozen-out 
 woodcock taps in vain for a soft spot in which 
 to insert his slender bill his larder is locked 
 up and the key gone. Now and then comes a 
 winter so sharp that the naturalist misses, next 
 summer, whole species from their accustomed 
 haunts. In one long frost all the snipe perished 
 in parts of Scotland, and have never been plen-
 
 48 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 tiful since. A rural poet, Hurdis, who caught 
 no inconsiderable portion of Cowper's inspira- 
 tion, has the following passage on the condition 
 of birds m winter, which took such effect on 
 our boyhood as to save many a blackbird and 
 starling from our " resounding tube," and which, 
 on reading it again after the not brief interval 
 now separating us from that golden time, still 
 seems to us much more genuine poetry than 
 many elegant extracts of far higher preten- 
 sion : 
 
 " Subdued by hunger, the poor feathery tribes, 
 Small dread of man retain, though wounded oft, 
 Oft slain, or scared by his resounding tube. 
 The fieldfare gray, and he of ruddier wing, 
 Hop o'er the field unheeding, easy prey 
 To him whose heart has adamant enough 
 To level thunder at their humbled race. 
 The sable bird melodious from the bough 
 No longer springs, alert and clamorous, 
 Short flight and sudden with transparent wing 
 Along the dike performing, fit by fit. 
 Shuddering he sits in horrent coat outswoln. 
 Despair has made him silent, and he falls 
 From his loved hawthorn of its berry spoiled, 
 A wasted skeleton, shot through and through 
 By the near-aiming sportsman. Lovely bird, 
 So end thy sorrows, and so ends thy song; 
 Never again in the still summer's eve, 
 Or early dawn of purple-vested morn, 
 Shalt thou be heard, or solitary song 
 Whistle contented from the watery bough,
 
 Our Poor Relations. 49 
 
 What time the sun flings o'er the dewy earth 
 
 An unexpected beam, fringing with flame 
 
 The cloud immense, whose shower-shedding folds 
 
 Have all day dwelt upon a deluged world : 
 
 No, thy sweet pipe is mute, it sings no more." 
 
 The picture which follows, and which less 
 obviously aims at exciting sympathy, is none 
 the less effective for that : 
 
 " High on the topmost branches of the elm, 
 In sable conversation sits the flock 
 Of social starlings, the withdrawing beam 
 Enjoying, sttpperless, of hasty day." 
 
 How mournful for these poor starvelings the 
 fact, apparently so insignificant, that the tem- 
 perature has fallen below freezing-point ! What 
 misery is approaching them in the leaden gloom 
 of the north-east ! And in those circles of the 
 earth where the reign of winter is prolonged, 
 hunger is the inseparable associate of life, lying 
 down with it in its shivering sleep, rising with 
 it in its gloomy waking, and tracking its foot- 
 steps always along the ice-bound circuit of its 
 weary quest. 
 
 But if the vicissitudes of climate are fraught 
 with suffering, so are the vicissitudes of age. 
 The infancy of many animals is as helpless as 
 4
 
 50 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 babyhood. Few hired nurses, it is true, are so 
 patient, so provident, so watchful, so untiring in 
 care, as the dams, feathered or furred, who, in 
 nest or lair, watch over their young. But then 
 the lives of these guardians are terribly preca- 
 rious, and innumerable are the orphans of the 
 animal world. The boy with his snare or his 
 stone the gamekeeper with gin, or net, or 
 gun the watchful enemies who swoop from 
 the air or spring from the ambush are very 
 apt to make the nurslings motherless. In how 
 many an eyrie have sat gaping eaglets expec- 
 tant of the broad food-bringing wings that will 
 never more overshadow them the said wings 
 being then indeed outstretched on a barn-door, 
 nailed there by that intelligent high-priest of 
 nature, the keeper ! In how many burrows 
 starve, before ever seeing the light, litters of 
 young whose providers lie dead in the wood, or 
 hang from a nail in the larder ! In how many 
 nests of sticks, swaying on the pine-tops, 
 scream the unfeathered rooks, while the old 
 bird is suspended as a scare-crow in the distant 
 corn-field! Every wet spring drowns in the 
 holes they have never learnt to quit a multitude 
 of small helpless creatures every storm of
 
 Our Poor Relations. 51 
 
 early summer casts innumerable half-fledged 
 birds prematurely on the hard world to cower, 
 and scramble, and palpitate, and hunger, till in- 
 evitable doom overtakes them after a more or 
 less short interval. This perilous season of in- 
 fancy past, however, the youth of animals is, 
 compared with that of man, secure and brief, 
 and their maturity is generally free from mor- 
 bid or disabling accidents. But then comes the 
 time of old age and decay old age such as 
 man's would be if wanting all which Macbeth 
 truly says should accompany it, in order to 
 render its many infirmities tolerable " honor, 
 love, obedience, troops of friends." As the ac- 
 tivity necessary to procure food diminishes, and 
 the joints stiffen, and the flesh recedes, leaving 
 to the bones the task of sustaining the wrin- 
 kling skin, the sunshine grows less warm, the 
 wind more bitter ; and if the worn-out creature 
 is neither made prey of by its enemies, nor put 
 to death (as is the instinct of many races) by 
 its friends, it withdraws .to some secret spot to 
 die in solitude. In this unprofitable stage of 
 existence, the protection of man is accorded to 
 domesticated animals on principles strictly com- 
 mercial. Those which are expected to pay the
 
 52 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 expenses of their keep are pretty certain to 
 find an execution put in by their inexorable 
 creditors as soon as they become bankrupt of 
 their services, and those only are suffered to 
 live whose existence is matter of luxury. The 
 old bullfinch is allowed to drop off his perch in 
 the course of nature, and to pipe his own re- 
 quiem the old parrot dozes quietly away after 
 forgetting half his phrases, and mixing up the 
 rest in a confusion which may, perhaps, be his 
 way of " babbling of green fields " the old 
 lapdog is recovered by medical aid out of many 
 apoplexies before submitting to the final stroke 
 the old spaniel lives on to meditate on the 
 happy hunting-grounds of the past, and per- 
 haps to dream of those of the future ; but for 
 the old horse (unless his master be rich as well 
 as kind) there is no interval of rest in old age, 
 wherein to prepare for those other pastures 
 whither he may be hastening, or to reflect on 
 the busy portion of his well-spent or ill-spent 
 life. Necessity generally compels the owner to 
 make an end of a life that will not repay its 
 maintenance. The veteran, " lagging superflu- 
 ous on the stage," asks for bran and gets a 
 bullet ; it is only his corn that he wants
 
 Our Poor Relations. 53 
 
 bruised when the knacker arrives with the 
 pole-axe. 
 
 Perhaps no case of royalty in reduced circum- 
 stances is so sad as that of the lion in his latter 
 days. Frequent as are, in our times, the vicis- 
 situdes of monarchs, neither the deposed Queen 
 of Spain at Bayonne, nor the exploded Bomba 
 in Rome, nor, to look farther back, Louis Phil- 
 ippe appearing suddenly in this country as Mr. 
 Smith, with a carpet-bag and cotton umbrella, 
 is so melancholy a figure of fallen greatness as 
 the King of the Solitudes in his old age. The 
 first stage of his decline is marked by the in- 
 ability any longer to spring on the nimble ante- 
 lope, or to cope with the sturdy buffalo ; and, 
 against his better nature, the leonine Lear, still 
 grand and imposing of aspect, but bereft of his 
 power, is driven to watch for stray children 
 going to the well, or old women picking sticks 
 in the forest. It might be imagined that the 
 sable philosophers of the bereaved tribe would 
 regard this abduction of aged females as praise- 
 worthy, or would at least consider the eating of 
 them as a sufficient punishment for the offence. 
 Not so, however ; a lion once known as a man, 
 woman, or child eater, is by no means encour-
 
 54 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 aged, even in Africa, in the indulgence of his 
 tastes ; and what with constant interruptions, 
 and the necessity for increased vigilance against 
 his foes, he seldom enjoys a meal in peace. As 
 his teeth fail and his joints stiffen, he is no 
 longer able to capture the feeblest crone or to 
 masticate the tenderest virgin ; and in the " last 
 stage of all that ends this strange eventful his- 
 tory," he (as we learn from competent authority) 
 catches mice for a subsistence, gulping them 
 like pills, and ekes out the insufficient diet with 
 grass. Imagine this incarnation of absolute 
 power, this rioter in the blood of swift and pow- 
 erful beasts, this emitter of the roar that causes 
 all the hearts in the wilderness to quake, driven, 
 in what should be a majestic old age, to pick 
 his own salads and to turn mouser ! The num- 
 ber of times that, with his large frame and cor- 
 responding appetite, he must perform for each 
 scanty meal the degrading act of watching for 
 and pouncing on a mouse, must ultimately de- 
 prave his whole character ; daily he must sink 
 lower in his own esteem ; reformation and sui- 
 cide are equally denied him ; till, happily, the 
 savage who comes upon his track, knowing by 
 signs that he has been forced to graze, knows
 
 Page 54.
 
 Our Poor Relations. 55 
 
 also that his feebleness is great ; and finding 
 him not far off, stretched out beneath a bush, 
 in the sleep of exhaustion or the torpor of self- 
 contempt, considerately hastens with his assagai 
 to draw a veil over the painful scene. 
 
 Were we to stop here, our disquisition would 
 be little other than a Jeremiad an empty 
 lament for misfortunes without prospect of rem- 
 edy a crying over spilt milk, which would be 
 equally foreign to our natural character and our 
 acquired philosophy. But evil as has been the 
 hap of the animal world, there are visible signs 
 of hope for it. Its relations with us are mani- 
 festly and rapidly improving, and this is owing 
 to a manifest and rapid improvement in our- 
 selves. Whether, amid all our boasts of the 
 progress of the species, man has really succeeded 
 in redressing the balance of good and evil in 
 his nature, may be matter of unpleasant doubt. 
 Sometimes, when a very reprehensible or lament- 
 able failing of some vanished generation is set 
 very pressingly before us some horrid perse- 
 cution, political or religious some triumph of 
 unreason some huge injustice practised by a 
 despot on a people, or by a people on them- 
 selves, we, being at the time, perhaps, in es-
 
 56 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 pecial good humor with the world around us, in 
 which those particular evils are not possible, take 
 heart, and would fain believe that humanity is 
 getting on. But presently, when we notice how 
 our contemporaries form what they imagine to 
 be their convictions, what sort of idols they 
 worship, what kind of progress it is which is 
 least disputable, and of which they are most 
 proud, we lose courage again, and feel as if man 
 were doomed forever to revolve in the vicious 
 circle of some maelstrom, some system inside 
 of which all is delusion, while outside of it all is 
 doubt. Surveying mankind with extensive view 
 from the prehistoric ages to Parliamentary com- 
 mittees on education, we fancy that we see 
 much of our gain balanced by corresponding 
 loss, and that we have made room for many of 
 our most valued characteristics only by discard- 
 ing qualities which have rendered whole races 
 forever famous. As we grow more practical, 
 we decry magnanimity ceasing to be su- 
 perstitious, we forget to be earnest vigor, 
 born of enterprise, is smothered in luxury 
 and the cuckoo science ousts the sparrow faith. 
 But all the time, various as are the aspects of 
 various ages, the elements of humanity remain
 
 Our Poor Relations. 57 
 
 unaltered, however disguised by their changing 
 vesture ; even as while the landscape shifts, in 
 one period a wood, or swamp, or heath, in the 
 next a farm or a city, the central fires are still 
 glowing beneath, and still betray their presence 
 at times in an earthquake or a volcano. Scrape 
 a man of science, or a man of progress, or a man 
 of fashion, a great statesman or a great general, 
 and you still get a savage. But nevertheless, in 
 striking the balance between old and new, there 
 is an item that must stand to our credit abso- 
 lutely, without deduction. Our relations with 
 the races which share the earth with us are so 
 changed, and the change is still so progressive, 
 that a new element would almost appear to 
 have been developed in our nature. All the 
 authors, not only of antiquity, but of modern 
 times, down to a few generations ago, may be 
 searched without the discovery of a dozen pas- 
 sages indicative of that fellowship with our co- 
 tenants of the globe which is now so common 
 a feeling. That the good man is merciful to 
 his beast that the ewe lamb of the parable 
 drank of its owner's cup and lay in his bosom 
 that Chaucer's prioress was so charitable as 
 to weep for a trapped mouse that the poor
 
 58 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 beetle which we tread upon feels a pang as 
 great as when a giant dies that Dapple was 
 the cherished friend of Sancho, are chief 
 among the few cases which occur to us, where 
 consideration for animals is implied in the best 
 known books of the past. Princes and heroes 
 have had their favorites, four-legged or feath- 
 ered, hawk or horse or hound and the cour- 
 sers of Achilles, the dog of Ulysses, and the 
 Cid's steed Bavieca, have their place in romance 
 and in history ; but their favor was born rather 
 of pride than of affection, and these are but 
 slight instances to set against so many ages of 
 mere chattelage. But what a wealth of pleasant 
 companionship do we now enjoy in the society 
 of those four-legged familiars without whom no 
 household seems complete ! and how largely do 
 their representatives figure in the literature 
 and art of the present century ! the affectionate 
 portraiture by pen and brush being both the 
 natural result of that kindlier feeling, and the 
 means of rendering it deeper and wider. Look- 
 ing backward to the beginning of the vista of 
 life through which we have journeyed, the best- 
 loved books of our childhood were those in 
 which regard for animals was directly or in-
 
 Our Poor Relations. 59 
 
 directly inculcated ; the indirect lesson being, 
 however, much the most impressive. Thus when 
 ^Esop, desiring to satirize or instruct mankind 
 through the medium of animals, represents his 
 lions, dogs, foxes, monkeys, and cranes, as not 
 merely conversing, but delivering didactic dis- 
 courses, and holding political debates, it is im- 
 possible for the reader who possesses the ardent 
 faith and the plastic imagination which are the 
 choicest endowments of childhood, not to invest 
 real animals with some of the faculties imputed 
 to the creations of the fabulist. Fairy tales, 
 too, resort largely to the animal world for ma- 
 chinery ; and the grimalkin on the hearth-rug 
 rises immensely in the estimation of the juve- 
 nile student of " Puss in Boots," as a possible 
 person ator of the agent of the Marquis of Cara- 
 bas, and an artful plotter, greatly superior to 
 mere men in the devising of stratagems. The 
 little bright-eyed nibblers behind the wainscot 
 have something of " the consecration and the 
 poet's dream " reflected on them by the rhymed 
 history of " The Town and Country Mice." 
 The solemn ape, surveying mankind from the 
 top of an organ, or meditating gloomily in his 
 cage in a caravan, may well be suspected of
 
 60 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 being other than he seems, considering that, in 
 the same form, a Calender, a king's son, was 
 once disguised by powerful enchantment. The 
 hare, darting from a clump of fern at the ap- 
 proach of the feminine intruder in white frock, 
 blue sash, cotton socks, and bare calves, is in- 
 vested with most pathetic interest in the eyes 
 of the wondering gazer, by the recollection of 
 that other hare whose many friends so utterly 
 failed her in the hour of need. Far, indeed, 
 from looking on birds and beasts as " the lower 
 animals," the youth whose childish sentiments 
 of wonder and companionship have been thus 
 cultivated, regards the creatures around him 
 with affection not unmixed with respect, as the 
 possessors of many faculties which he does not 
 share, the thinkers of many thoughts unknown 
 to him, the pilgrims in many paths apart from 
 his ; while, nevertheless, they have so much in 
 common with him as to constitute ground for 
 intimacy and friendship. Children of this 
 stamp, of whatever degree, going forth to their 
 sports, whether on the well-kept lawn or the 
 village green, are pretty sure to be accompanied 
 by a dog perhaps a skye with a blue ribbon, 
 perhaps a nondescript cur in a leathern collar.
 
 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 61 
 
 made by the paternal hand of the cobbler, 
 while the youngest of the party bears with him 
 a great tomcat, whose eyes are seen patiently 
 winking between his uncomfortably outstretched 
 legs over the bearer's pinafored shoulder, and 
 
 whose 
 tail (from 
 the equal- 
 ity in their 
 stature) drags 
 on the ground ; 
 and, in such cases, 
 Vixen and Grey Tom, 
 far from being mere passive 
 appendages to the amusements of the hour, are 
 looked on as sage confederates, of great experi- 
 ence in the art of rightly spending a holiday. 
 As a childhood of this kind merges into 
 youth, its progressive literature still aids in 
 nourishing that love for animals which has
 
 62 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 often been a distinguishing characteristic of 
 the men of genius who stamp their spirit on 
 the age. Scott's great hounds Fang, the 
 gaunt friend of Gurth, the swineherd ; Roswal, 
 guardian of the standard for Kenneth of Scot- 
 land ; Bevis, companion of Sir Henry Lee ; and 
 Luath, beloved of the Lady of the Lake are 
 magnificent ; and as for small dogs, has he not 
 given to the whole tribe of Dandie Dinmonts 
 a local habitation and a name ? Bulwer's Sir 
 Isaac is a careful and reverential study by a 
 great master, of a highly but not preternatural- 
 ly gifted dog. Dickens has doubly and trebly 
 proved himself a dog fancier, by his portraits of 
 Diogenes, the enemy of Mr. Toots ; and Gyp, 
 adored by Dora ; and Boxer, the associate of 
 John Peerybingle, who took an obtrusive inter- 
 est in the baby : besides which he has devoted 
 a whole paper of his " Uncommercial Traveller" 
 to dogs, especially those who keep blind men, 
 and has added to his animal gallery a capital 
 pony and a miraculous raven. George Eliot 
 has given Adam Bede's friend, the schoolmas- 
 ter, a female dog of great merit, and has be- 
 stowed a vast amount of affectionate skill on 
 the portrait of the ape Annibal, in the " Span-
 
 Our Poor Relations. 63 
 
 ish Gypsy." Then what reverence for the wear- 
 ers of fur and feathers is implied in the works 
 of Landseer ! what sympathy with them in 
 the popularity of those world-famous pictures ! 
 though we could vyish that some incidents 
 had remained uncommemorated by Sir Edwin's 
 brush, such as the fox sneaking up to prey on 
 the dead stags locked in each other's horns, 
 and the transfixed otter writhing round to bite 
 the shaft of the spear, which are simply abomi- 
 nable. Nor, amidst the many delineators of 
 animals who adorn the age the Bonheurs, 
 Ansdells, Coopers, Weirs, Willises, and (let us 
 add) Grisets must Leech be forgotten. What 
 arrogance in his fat lapdogs, what fun and mis- 
 chief and frank good-fellowship in his Scotch 
 terriers, what spirit in his hounds and horses ! 
 The youth thus sustained in his finer tastes by 
 great examples, enters manhood,- and passes 
 through it in constant friendly communion with 
 relations and dependants and associates of 
 every kind. His horses are his trusted famil- 
 iars ; if a sportsman, he is cordial with his 
 dogs, rides well forward to hounds (though 
 never to the extreme distress or injury of his 
 good steed), and with his whole life gives the
 
 64 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 lie to those maudlin humanitarians who insist 
 that cruelty constitutes the pleasure of sport. 
 His mother instilled, and his sisters share, his 
 sympathies for the inarticulate races. How 
 infinitely does that girl add to her attractions 
 who thinks more of her spaniel or her collie, 
 her superannuated pony or antediluvian macaw, 
 than of the most cherished inanimate posses- 
 sion, not excepting the mysterious structure of 
 her back hair ! Memory and imagination come 
 in to enhance affection : the old donkey in the 
 paddock, as he approaches her for his daily 
 crust with his exalted ears bent forward, re- 
 minds her of the childhood which she still rec- 
 ollects with delight, though not, as yet, with 
 regret. The trills of her blackbird in his wick- 
 er cage, placed there because he was found in 
 the wood with a broken wing, cause her to 
 think of the Spring, when a young maid's, no 
 less than a young man's, fancy " lightly turns 
 to thoughts of love." The gay parroquer, in 
 its gilded palace, suggests to her, in its rich 
 green, the foliage of tropical forests in its 
 splendid scarlet, the flowers which glow amidst 
 the leaves ; and when its form of grace and 
 beauty is lifeless, it is consigned to its garden-
 
 Our Poor Relations. 65 
 
 tomb with tears which well become the eyes 
 whose glances many lovers watch for. If her 
 acts of charity to the featherless bipeds around 
 her are many, not fewer are those which benefit 
 the unfortunate and the helpless who have no 
 language wherein to speak their complaints 
 and when she has children, she teaches them, 
 as a lesson not inferior to any to be found in 
 Dr. Watts, or Dr. Paley, or Dr. Newman, or 
 any other Doctor whatsoever, that 
 
 " He prayeth well who loveth well 
 Both man and bird and beast." 
 
 We will now, after the manner of great mor- 
 alists, such as he who depicted the careers of 
 the Industrious and Idle Apprentices, give the 
 reverse of this picture, in the horrible imp of 
 empty head and stony heart, who has been 
 trained to regard the creatures around him as 
 the mere ministers of his pleasure and. his 
 pride, and who, in fact, represents in its worst 
 form the former state of feeling respecting ani- 
 mals. Provided, almost in his cradle, by his 
 unnatural parents, with puppies and kittens 
 whereon to wreak his evil propensities, he 
 treats them, to the best of his ability, as the 
 infant Hercules treated the serpents, and when 
 5
 
 66 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 provoked to retaliate with tooth or claw, they 
 are ordered, with his full concurrence, to imme- 
 diate execution. A little later he hails the peri- 
 odical pregnancies of the ill-used family cat as 
 so many opportunities in. store for drowning 
 her progeny. The fables, so dear to lovable 
 childhood, of lambs and wolves, apes and foxes, 
 are rejected by his practical mind as rubbishy 
 lies. All defenceless animals falling into his 
 power are subject to martyrdom by lapidation. 
 Show him a shy bird of rare beauty on moor or 
 heath, in wood or valley, and the soulless goblin 
 immediately shies a stone at it. Stray tabbies 
 are the certain victims of his bull-terrier ; and 
 the terrier itself, when it refuses to sit up and 
 smoke a pipe, or to go into the river after a 
 water-rat, is beaten and kicked without mercy. 
 He goes with a relish to see the keeper shoot 
 old fonto, who was whelped ten years ago in 
 the kennel, and comes in to give his sisters 
 (who don't care) appreciative details of the exe- 
 cution. As a sportsman he is a tyrant to his 
 dogs, a butcher on his horse, and sitting on 
 that blown and drooping steed, he looks on 
 with disgusting satisfaction when the fox is 
 broken up. Throughout life he regards all his
 
 Our Poor Relations. 67 
 
 animated possessions (including his unhappy 
 wife) simply as matters of a certain money 
 value, to be made to pay or to be got rid of. 
 Not to pursue his revolting career through all 
 its stages, we will merely hint that he probably 
 ends by committing a double parricide ; and 
 being righteously condemned to the gallows, is 
 reprieved only by the inappropriate tenderness 
 of the Home Secretary. 
 
 To one who considers the subject, it will be 
 apparent that the influences at work in favor of 
 animals, are of a nature to gain in force, and 
 that their friends, constantly increasing in num- 
 ber, will end by shouldering their foes altogeth- 
 er to the shady side of public sentiment. It is 
 now a very old story that a law exists for the 
 prevention of cruelty to animals, who thus for 
 the first time acquire a legal footing in the 
 world. But laws are often inoperative, unless 
 it is the interest of somebody to enforce them ; 
 and as the injured parties cannot in this case 
 apply to the nearest magistrate for a warrant, 
 in order to help them in the matter certain 
 worthy men and women long ago formed a So- 
 ciety, which is increasing in prosperity every 
 year. Many deeds of cruelty are still done
 
 68 Oiir Poor Relations. 
 
 which cannot be punished or detected ; but in 
 thousands of cases which would formerly have 
 escaped even reprobation, wronged animals now 
 appear in court by " their next friend " (one of 
 the society's officers), and make the perpetra- 
 tors pay in purse or person. Not only is a 
 check thus imposed on small private atrocities, 
 like the bruising and lashing of horses by bru- 
 tal wagoners, the martyrizing of cats and dogs 
 by blackguard boys, and the battering of don- 
 keys by ferocious costermongers, but heavy 
 blows are also dealt at such organized cruelties 
 as the crowding of animals on rough sea voy- 
 ages in unfit vessels, the transmission of others 
 on long journeys by rail without food or water, 
 the shearing and starving of sheep in winter, 
 the setting of steel traps for wild creatures, and 
 the wanton destruction of sea-fowl and rare 
 birds. A society having the same objects exists 
 in France, and in that country, as well as in 
 Australia and several States of the American 
 Union, stringent laws protect many kinds of 
 birds. Kindred societies with special objects 
 have also been formed among us ; drinking- 
 troughs for animals in hot weather abound in 
 the metropolis, and a Home has been estab-
 
 Our Poor Relations. 69 
 
 lished for Lost Dogs. No kind of animal mis- 
 ery is more common or more lamentable than 
 that of these outcasts, who may be seen any 
 day in one or other of our London thorough- 
 fares, purposely lost in many cases by owners 
 who are unwilling to pay the five-shilling dog 
 tax, though a single day's abstinence from 
 drunkenness, or a very brief sacrifice of pleas- 
 ure or comfort in each year, would suffice to 
 retain the old companion. The first stage of 
 being thus astray in the wilderness of London 
 is marked by a wild galloping to and fro, with 
 an occasional pause to gaze down cross-streets. 
 At length, hopeless and wearied, the lost one 
 sinks into a slow trot, occasionally lifting his 
 hollow, anxious eyes to scan an approaching 
 face, and almost seeming to shake his head in 
 despair as he lowers them again. Then comes 
 the period of ravenous hunting in gutters and 
 corners for chance scraps, of gazing fixedly 
 down kitchen areas, of sleeping coiled up on 
 doorsteps, and of pertinacious haunting of neigh- 
 borhoods where some hand has once bestowed 
 a morsel. All those avenues of stone which we 
 call streets are to the poor starveling more bar- 
 ren of food than the desert, but he knows how
 
 7O Our Poor Relations. 
 
 the interiors abound in meat and drink ; he 
 knows, too, that any chance passenger, whose 
 face attracts his canine sympathies, may intro- 
 duce him to one of these scenes of plenty, and 
 he attaches himself, for a time, humbly and 
 wistfully, to some one whose visage hits his 
 fancy, and who, perhaps, is never aware of the 
 thin shadow which follows his footsteps. At 
 last both appetite and strength have departed, 
 the recollection of his home has become an un- 
 certain dream, and he retires into a corner to 
 die, unless, in some slum, the interesting family 
 of the rat-catcher, the costermonger, the dog- 
 stealer, or the sporting cobbler, seizing him 
 joyfully as their lawful prey, proceed to ascer- 
 tain by experiment what capacity, not for nour- 
 ishment but for agony, may be still left in him. 
 By recent regulations the police are authorized 
 to conduct to their nearest station these unfor- 
 tunates, and to transmit them from thence to 
 the Home at Holloway. We once visited the 
 retreat, situated in a courtyard in the outskirts 
 of that fashionable suburb. Our entrance was 
 signalized by the hasty withdrawal of a number 
 of cats, whose stealthy profiles were presently 
 seen on the surrounding walls, wearing all the
 
 Our Poor Relations. 71 
 
 aspect of guilty evasion, for, in fact, their enter- 
 prise had been predatory, and directed against 
 the dogs' food. The dogs themselves, seated in 
 rows on the floor and on benches, were few in 
 number and choice in kind high-bred, deep- 
 jowled bloodhounds, whose home had been the 
 castle-yard of some great seigneur poodles 
 who would have been ornaments to the bench 
 of any court of judicature weak-eyed, pink- 
 nosed, querulous Maltese in blue ribbons toy- 
 terriers in splendid collars like orders of knight- 
 hood pugs with muzzles so short that one 
 wondered where -their tongues could be and 
 intelligent skyes who whined and frisked at the 
 approach of well-clad visitors ; all of them at that 
 moment being doubtless sought for throughout 
 London by young men of good character, 'in 
 genteel liveries, whose places were endangered 
 by the carelessness which had caused the loss 
 of the favorites. On inquiring where the com- 
 moner sorts of dogs might be, we found that as 
 regarded them, the Home might have been 
 properly described as their long home, inas- 
 much as all who were not likely to be claimed 
 were immediately put to death and buried. It 
 seemed dubious whether the animals thus per-
 
 72 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 manently relieved from want, would, if consult- 
 ed, regard this method of disposal as a high 
 favor ; and, moreover, so very inexpensive a pro- 
 vision did not seem to call for large contribu- 
 tions. Later inquiries, however, have produced 
 answers describing a more favorable arrange- 
 ment ; and it seems that only those whose life 
 may be considered a burden to them are now 
 destroyed, the rest having situations procured 
 for them of a kind that was not quite clearly ap- 
 parent to us ; farmed out, perhaps, like parish 
 apprentices, and, let us hope, at least as well 
 cared for.* 
 
 It would seem, then, that the fancy in which 
 we indulged at the beginning of this paper, of 
 more genial relations being established between 
 the dominant and the less fortunate races of 
 the earth, is not without prospect of realiza- 
 tion. The societies we have mentioned may in 
 course of time be extended till they cease to be 
 separate societies any longer, by including all 
 the right-minded and right-hearted of the hu- 
 
 * The Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cru- 
 elty to Animals are about to establish a Home for Lost 
 and Disabled Animals in Boston. Such a one has been 
 in operation in Philadelphia for two years, under the 
 care of the Women's Branch of the Pennsylvania Society.
 
 Our Poor Relations. 73 
 
 man race, each of whom will be as vigilant as 
 any official to prevent and detect cruelty. To 
 lead " a dog's life of it " may come to mean uni- 
 versally a not unpleasant state of existence 
 " slaving like a horse " will denote a wholesome 
 and moderate share of labor and " monkey's 
 allowance " may represent a fair amount of half- 
 pence in proportion to the kicks. 
 
 As time goes on, the enthusiast may perhaps 
 begin to catch glimpses of the renewal of that 
 other period which tradition and fable point to 
 in the past, when the close kinship existing 
 between the articulate and inarticulate sylvan 
 races led to a deeper mutual understanding and 
 more intimate communion. In times when the 
 doctrine that all classes ought to be represented 
 in Parliament is favorably received, the next 
 step would obviously be to elect members for 
 brute constituencies, or at least to agitate for 
 that result. The effect of a great cattle-meet- 
 ing in Smithfield, conducted with much lowing 
 and bellowing, and followed by large proces- 
 sions of horned animals through our principal 
 thoroughfares, could hardly fail to produce im- 
 portant constitutional changes. A charge of 
 cab-horses out on strike, conducted by some
 
 74 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 equine Beales against the park-palings with a 
 view to pasturing inside, might extract large 
 concessions from a weak Cabinet ; while a mon- 
 ster-meeting of aggrieved dogs under the clock- 
 tower at Westminster, howling their complaints 
 to the moon, and vociferously invoking " a 
 plague on both our Houses," might be attended 
 with legislative results not inferior to those 
 which Mr. Bright anticipated when he advised 
 the coercion of Parliament by a like expedient.* 
 Later, when progress shall happily have brought 
 us to government by pure majorities, that epoch 
 may commence which ^Esop seems to hint at 
 in the fable where the lion talks of turning 
 sculptor and representing the beast astride of 
 the man. Once, while pursuing this somewhat 
 fantastic train of thought, we beheld in a kind 
 of vision, such as visited Bunyan and Dante, a 
 scene of imaginary retribution awaiting the hu- 
 man race at the hands of the oppressed. Mul- 
 
 * Something of this sort seems to be anticipated in the 
 English Dog Bill of the present year, which commences 
 with the extraordinary preamble " Whereas, it is expe- 
 dient that further protection should be provided against 
 dogs." What can our poor friends have been doing, to 
 call for the special interposition of "the Lords Spiritual 
 and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parlia- 
 ment assembled?"
 
 Our Poor Relations. 75 
 
 titudes of human beings were systematically 
 fattened as food for the carnivora. They were 
 frequently forwarded to great distances by train, 
 in trucks, without food or water. Large num- 
 bers of infants were constantly boiled down to 
 form broth for invalid animals. In over-popu- 
 lous districts babies were given to malicious 
 young cats and dogs to be taken away and 
 drowned. Boys were hunted by terriers, and 
 stoned to death by frogs. Mice were a good 
 deal occupied in setting man-traps, baited with 
 toasted cheese, in poor neighborhoods. Gouty 
 old gentlemen were put into the shafts of night- 
 cabs, and forced to totter, on their weak ankles 
 and diseased joints, to clubs, where they picked 
 up fashionable young colts, and took them, at 
 such pace as whipcord could extract, to St. 
 John's Wood, to visit chestnut fillies. Flying 
 figures in scarlet coats, buckskins, and top- 
 boots were run into by packs of foxes. Old 
 cock-grouse strutted out for a morning's sport, 
 and came in to talk of how many brace of 
 country gentlemen they had bagged. The fate 
 of gamekeepers was appalling ; they lived a 
 precarious life in holes and caves ; they were 
 perpetually harried and set upon by game and
 
 j6 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 vermin : held fast in steel traps, their toes were 
 nibbled by stoats and martens ; finally, their 
 eyes picked out by owls and kites, they were 
 gibbeted alive on trees, head downwards, when 
 polecats mounted sentry over them, favoring 
 the sufferers with their agreeable presence till 
 the termination of their martyrdom. In one 
 especially tragic case, a corpulent and short- 
 sighted naturalist in spectacles dodged about 
 painfully amid the topmost branches of a wood, 
 while a Mias underneath, armed with a gun, in- 
 flicted on him dreadful wounds. A veterinary 
 surgeon of Alfort was stretched on his back, 
 his arms and legs secured to posts, in order 
 that a horse might cut him up alive for the 
 benefit of an equine audience ; but the gener- 
 ous steed, incapable of vindictive feelings, with 
 one disdainful stamp on the midriff crushed the 
 wretch's life out. 
 
 Though these visions are but such stuff as 
 dreams are made of, yet, nevertheless, is their 
 fabric not altogether baseless. Besides the 
 signs which we have enumerated as indicating 
 that the relationship of the tribes of the earth 
 with the human family are more conscientiously 
 recognized than of old, animals have lately
 
 Our Poor Relations. 77 
 
 achieved the important success of acquiring 
 their own especial organ in the press.* We do 
 not mean that animals perform the part either 
 of editor or contributors to this periodical 
 we wish they did. 
 
 Many authors renowned for pathos Kit 
 Marlowe, Byron, Edgar Poe have been sad 
 dogs ; yet which of them could write anything 
 half so touching as would be the reminiscences 
 of some infinitely sadder dog, meditating on his 
 sufferings in the Home at Holloway ? As for 
 imaginary griefs go to the cab-horse, thou 
 grumbler, consider his woes and be silent ! 
 What a poem would the ostrich write with his 
 claw on the sand of the desert, and how price- 
 less compared with the verses even of laureates, 
 would be the transcript thereof ! '* Mes Larmes, 
 by a Crocodile," - sensational, no doubt, be- 
 yond French or English precedent, excelling 
 Sand, or Sue, or Braddon, would, as a serial, 
 make the fortune of any magazine. Could the 
 lion translate for us that far gaze of his, which, 
 disregarding the Sunday visitors in front of his 
 
 * "Our Dumb Animals," published monthly by the 
 Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
 Animals, at 46 Washington Street, Boston.
 
 78 
 
 Our Poor Relations. 
 
 cage, is fixed on some imaginary desert horizon 
 
 what extract from ancient or modern poetry 
 could compete with it ? What a variety of sub- 
 ject and of style would thus open on us, far 
 beyond the diversities of human authorship 
 
 lyric, epic, dramatic, descrip- 
 tive defiant outburst and 
 passionate lament < life 
 
 in innumerable phases, 
 domestic, romantic, 
 gloomy, rapturous, 
 cynical, and cheer- 
 ful ! Even with- 
 out such aid 
 we constantly, 
 though uncon- 
 sciously, ac- 
 knowledge their 
 kinship with 
 humanity. In 
 their simple, clear natures, undimmed by the 
 breath of public opinion, unconfused by the 
 effort to conform or to simulate, we see mir- 
 rored our own virtues and vices. There are 
 other proper studies of mankind besides man. 
 The fox, the bear, the bee, the eagle, the lion,
 
 Our Poor Relations. 79 
 
 the hog, the serpent, the dove, are all types of 
 men and women. Prophetic language calls the 
 worm our sister ; and a philosopher of these 
 times defines the Frenchman of the Revolu- 
 tion as a " tiger-ape." We have ourselves heard 
 an indignant lady characterize a too insinua- 
 ting swain as " that crocodile ; " and lately, at a 
 civic feast abounding in calipash and calipee, 
 we observed, or fancied we observed, that many 
 of the guests combined, as in Byron's line, " the 
 rage of the vulture " with the " love of the tur- 
 tle." And do we not stand in almost humiliat- 
 ing relation to the inevitable crow, who spends 
 so much of his valuable time in imprinting his 
 autograph on the corners of all our eyes, seem- 
 ing thereby to mark us for his own ? Deeply 
 impressed with the closeness and reality of 
 these connections, and deriving no inconsidera- 
 ble share of the enjoyment of life from our keen 
 sense of them, it has been to us not only a 
 pleasure but a solemn duty, often postponed, 
 indeed, but never abandoned, thus to break 
 ground in the corners of a great subject, and to 
 record with pride the sentiments of affection 
 and respect which we entertain for OUR POOR 
 RELATIONS.
 
 J. E. TLLTON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 11 
 
 GRECIAN, ROMAN, SCANDINAVIAN, AND MEDIEVAL 
 
 MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 BY THOMAS 
 
 IX THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 T7ie Age of Fable. 
 
 The Age of Chivalry. 
 
 Legends of Charlemagne. 
 
 These volumes are elegantly illustrated, printed on laid tinted paper, 
 and bound in muslin, half-calf, library, and full Turkey. 
 
 Testimonials from such rourccs as the following will be sufficient to 
 attract attention to the examination of the works. 
 
 From JAHED SPAKK., LL.D., Editor cf the Writmgs of Washington ami 
 franklin, and former 1'resident of Harvard University. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, Feb. 20, 1803. 
 
 Mi:ssr.s. J. E. TILTOX & Co.. I have perused with great satisfaction 
 Hr. Huliinch's three works, " The Ago of Fable," " The Age of Chivalry,"
 
 12 
 
 J. K. TILTOX & CO. 8 PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 and " Legends of Charlemagne." They appear to me extremely well 
 adapted to r.ttain the object proposed by the author. They may be re- 
 garded as a key to the literature of r.ncient and modern times, and especi- 
 ally as illustrating the composilions of the distinguished poets of various 
 countries and periods. The style is clear and concise, the incidents ere 
 well combined, and the stories are told hi a manner that cannot full to 
 wia the attention and excite the reflections of the reader. 
 
 Such being my opinion of these volumes, I will only add that they are 
 peculiarly suited to the young, as _ furnishing the elements which will 
 enable them to understand and appreciate the books to which their 
 thoughts and leisure will be directed hi their more mature years. 
 Respectfully yours, 
 
 JARED SFAEKS. 
 
 From GEORGE R. EMKHSOX, LL.D., Member of the Massachusetts Hoard 
 
 of Education, and Author of the " Report on the Forest-Trees of 
 
 Massachusetts," printed by order of Ike Legislature. 
 
 I have just read the " Legends of Charlemagne," a very delightful, and, 
 though it is all fabulous, a very useful book. The stories are admirably 
 well told, in language which, for* delicate purity and unaffected simplicity, 
 is a model for young writers to imitate. The illustrations are spirited, and 
 in excellent taste ; and the whole presentation of the work is most credit- 
 r.bie to the American press. 
 
 This beautiful volume is a lit follower and companion of the excellent 
 "Age of Fable" and "Age of Chivalry." Together they form the best 
 introduction that has yet appeared to the great and noble body of English 
 poetry. 
 
 They will furnish abundant help to the teacher and to the mother in ex- 
 plaining allusions in text-books, and in the more precious volume stored 
 for leisure hours ; and henceforward no library can be considered tolerably 
 complete which does not have on its shelves "The Age of Fable," "The 
 Age of Chivalry," and the " Legends of Charlemagne." 
 
 From llo.v. WILLIAM II. SKWAKD, Secretary of State. 
 
 I give you my sincere thanks for a copy of " The Age of Fable " which 
 you have sent to inc. Ko liberal education is complete without a knowl- 
 edge of the mythology of the ancients. At the same time, the works de- 
 voted to that subject, so f.:r as they have fallen under my observation, 
 have been either too purely didactic for the perusal of generr.l readers, or 
 else so elaborate as to seem to exact more time than they could bestow. 
 This work seems to avoid these inconveniences, and is, at the same time, 
 just such a one as the classical reader requires for reference. I trust thr.t 
 a liberal appreciation of it by the public will reward the author for the 
 talent and time bestowed upon it.
 
 J. E. TILTON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 13 
 
 From Hox. CHARLES SUMNER. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, I liave enjoyed the three volumes of Mr. Bulfinch, " The 
 Age of Fable," " Tlie Legends of Charlemagne/' "The Age of Chivalry," 
 which ^eem lo me written with knowledge, taste, and conscientious fidel- 
 ity. They are books botli for the young r.nd the old. The young will find 
 in them a key to poetry, and even to history, important to possess: the 
 oid will find in them a pleasant epitome of those stories which for ages 
 have entered into the pastime of life. Whether at school, at home, or in 
 the library, such books must be welcomed. 
 
 Believe me, gentlemen, faithfully yours, 
 
 CHARLES SUMMER. 
 Messrs. J. E. TILTON & Co. 
 
 from the North- American Review. 
 
 These legends are of hardly less importance, in a literary point of view, 
 than the classic mythology. Besides having 1 been reproduced in various 
 forms and in every generation, they are constantly the subjects of allu- 
 sion and reference ; so that some acquaintance with them is essential to every 
 person who desires to understand even all that he is likely to read. Yet 
 hitherto there has been no easily accessible manual of this mediaeval my- 
 thology ; and our knowledge of it has been acquired in miscellaneous ways, 
 and by slow and uncertain stages. The want which was thus felt, though 
 unexpressed, Mr. Bulfineh has supplied. His book has the double merit of 
 being at once a manual of instruction in its own department of literature, 
 and a rich collection of romances charmingly narrated. It bears the 
 characteristics which his books must needs bear, conscientious accuracy, 
 pure taste, symmetrical and graceful finish. His moral nature would not 
 let him do r.ny thing with less than his best ability; and his ability is that of 
 an accomplished scholar, a true poet in conception and fancy (though we 
 know not whether he has ever written verse), and a writer of exquisite re- 
 finement and delicacy of thought and expression. The publishers have 
 issued this book in a form and style worthy of its merits, and have en- 
 riched it with well-executed engravings and wood-cuts. We are glad to 
 learn that the same publishers have issued, in a similar style of beauty, a 
 new edition of Mr. Bulflnch's "Age of Fable." 
 
 Three volumes, new style, gilt top, sold only in boxes. 
 
 Cloth $0.75 
 
 Half-calf 15.00 
 
 Half-morocco 15.00 
 
 Morocco, antique . . . 21. CO
 
 18471
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000674449 4