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penetrate into the interior further than the foot of civilised man had yet trodden." His pages reek with the slaughter of countless pachyderms as well as of elands, giraffes, and lions. The term of a single human generation has sufficed to extinguish these noble forms of life in Bechuanaland; their existence is, indeed, incompatible with civilisation, unless by timely and kindly forethought the example of the United States Government is followed in reserving large tracts as national parks, wherein some of the old world animals may be preserved.

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We may plume ourselves, not without reason, on the restrictions placed in late years on the cruelty of human beings, whether towards each other or towards the lower animals. It is an astounding matter for reflection how long the much vaunted "march went on before it occurred to men that the world would be a better place if there were less suffering in it. Some of the pioneers of civilisation themselves suffered most bitterly. No mortal ever was born upon this earth more willing and capable to leave it a better place than he found it than the Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon. In his day alchemy and astrology obscured the field to be afterwards explored by the clear lenses of chemistry and astronomy; yet, hindered as he was by the prejudice and superstition of the thirteenth century, his genius touched the true clue to physical knowledge, and revealed to him, as through a mist, the outlines of truth.

The vast range of subjects dealt with in his little-known works; the spirit in which they are handled, so averse from the mysticism and obscurantism of his contemporaries, -testify to his unflagging zeal and seldom erring understanding. One

has to picture the breathless, reverent patience with which he watched the veil moving little by little aside from the face of nature, to note the masculine fibre of the mind that steered so stoutly athwart the strong current of contemporary thought, before realising how bitter must have been the doom to which jealous ignorance consigned him. His precious writings were torn from him and condemned; he himself, deprived of books and writing materials, was imprisoned for many years; the piercing intellect, forced to refrain from observation or research, brooded in silence over the might-have-been. "I was imprisoned," he wrote mournfully in after-years, "because of the incredible stupidity of those with whom I had to do." Could human cruelty devise a more brutal punishment than this?

Oh, but it may be said, this happened in the dark ages. Very well skip three hundred years, and observe the incidents of the "march" just two centuries ago. Sir Thomas Browne, Doctor of Medicine, the cultivated and lively author not only of 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica,' a work devoted to the refutation of vulgar errors, but of the far deeper and tenderer 'Religio Medici,' appears in the witness - box to give evidence against two witches.

More than a hundred years later (we are getting towards the recent stages of the "march" now) lively debates took place in the House of Commons upon a bill to abolish bear-baiting. The bill was thrown out by 50 votes to 32, although, to illustrate the horrors of the system, the Hon. George Lamb, member for Dungarvan, produced a printed paper (which is still in existence) in the form of a playbill, having at the top the Royal arms between the letters

A. R. (Anna Regina), of which the following is the text:

are admirably turned out and driven, but there are still many of a minimum of corn and a maxwhose owners act on the principle imum of whipcord. In one such I was travelling one day: the driver plied his whip vigorously about the tenderest parts of his horse's flanks, and awkwardly allowed the lash to strike me across the face.

"At the Bear Garden in Hockley in the Hole, near Clerkenwell Green. "These are to give notice to all gentlemen, gamesters, and others that on this present Monday, being the 27th of April 1702, a great match is to be fought by a bald faced Dog of Middlesex against a fallow Dog of Cow Cross, for a Guinea each Dog, five let-goes out of hand, which goes fairest and furthest in wins all: being a General Day of Sport by all the Old Gamesters and a Great Mad Bull to be turned loose in the Game - place, with Fire-works all over him, and two or three Cats ty'd to his Tail, and Dogs after them. Also other variety of Bull-baiting and Bear-baiting. Be-a-mile, which, if his average daily ginning at two of the Clock."

It is true that the advertisement was at that time (in 1825) more than a century old, but there was nothing in the law as it then was to prevent similar horrors, and the House of Commons refused to alter it.

This brings the matter down to our own times. Much has been done, but our hands are hardly clean enough for complacency yet.

Few societies have done more good work than that for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, yet who can walk in the Birdcage Walk in the early morning and watch the barbarous treatment of costers' donkeys and ponies there, without seeing that more is wanted than any society, however diligent, can effect? It is a long, flat piece of road, and underfed, overloaded animals are mercilessly raced along it.

It is a pity that horses suffer mutely. If they could express their torments by yells as piercing and loud in proportion to their size as, for example, a wounded hare utters, we should soon be enlightened as to the amount of suffering in our streets. Some of the hansom cabs which ply there

The pain was acute, and I did not suffer in silence; yet for one indirect cut that I received in that journey, the unfortunate quadruped received scores. He received punishment at the rate of about fifty lashes

task is moderately computed at twelve miles, would give the hideous total of six hundred lashes a-day!

This incident took place in broad daylight, but cabmen's night-horses are indeed a pitiful class.

Nearly all of those that are assembled nightly in Palace Yard, when the House of Commons is sitting, are suffering from navicular disease, caused by fast work on hard pavements. You may see the unhappy animals standing with first one forefoot, then the other, pointed forward to relieve the pain, which must resemble toothache on a large scale, for it is caused by the decay of a bone nearly two inches long in the centre of the foot. Would society endure horses being worked in this condition if they could signify their pangs as plainly as a fine lady with neuralgia?

The barbarity of tight bearingreins was forcibly exposed and condemned by a writer in 'Maga' of June 1875, and certainly the excessive use of them thereafter became less common; but it is still too often to be seen. would not be seen at all if people in general understood the peculiar form of torture produced by it.

It

A pair of fat, well-groomed, 16hands carriage-horses standing in the streets are not subjects to attract commiseration from passersby; the restless tossing of their heads may be taken for the sign of pride and spirit: but what heart rending groans could alone express what these fine animals have to endure! Along the top of a horse's neck runs a massive sinew, strong enough to support the leverage of the head; it is attached to several vertebræ nearest the shoulder, then it runs free over the crest and becomes attached again to the vertebræ nearest the poll. When the head is pulled into the position decreed by man's vanity, the vertebræ under the crest press hard into the sinew, and must cause intense suffering, sometimes setting up the inflammation known as poll-evil.

Some years ago I was witness of an act of great though unintentional cruelty inflicted by the ignorance of scientific people concerned in the management of an electric exhibition. Among other examples of the application of electric lighting was one to show it in operation under water. A glass globe, filled with water, contained a burner in full blaze, and -a goldfish. Of course the fish was only put in to make an attractive object, but one has only to remember that fish suffer from exposure even to ordinary daylight, that the whole surface of their bodies is sensitive to it, and lastly, that they have no eyelids cannot close their eyes —to realise that this was torture applied of more than Carthaginian ferocity. In this matter of cruelty the intentions of this generation are undoubtedly good, although it seems as if in some respects civilisation had outstripped knowledge-as if we had been travel

VOL. CXLIX.-NO. DCCCCVI.

ling too fast to take sufficient thought.

Although we are all ready to take credit for the advance of civilisation, there are constantly heard complaints about the signs of the times. One of the commonest of these is that "servants are not what they were." It would be very odd if they were, considering that masters pride themselves upon being very different from those of olden time, and that all the surroundings and manner of life have altered so much. But what is intended to be conveyed is that servants are no longer so good as they were. It is a peevish and wearisome complaint that has been heard from generation to generation. Even such a shrewd observer and frank moralist as Defoe gave utterance to it nearly two centuries ago. Hear his grumble in "Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business" about the servant girl of 1725:

"Her neat leathern shoes are now transformed into laced ones with high heels; her yarn stockings are turned into fine woollen ones, with silk clocks; and her high wooden pattens are kicked away for leathern clogs. She must have a hoop, too, as well as her mistress; and her poor linseywoolsey petticoat is changed into a good silk one, for four or five yards wide at the least. Not to carry the description further, in short, plain country Joan is now turned into a fine city madam,—can drink tea, take snuff, and carry herself as high as

the best."

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the name of his wife was Abigail; and she was a woman of good understanding, and of a beautiful countenance: but the man was churlish, and evil in his doings." Has it not a familiar ring in our ears when this rich churl claims, "There be many servants that break away from their masters nowadays"? Well, at all events, persists the laudator temporis acti, there was always a wholesome distinction between classes until recent years: the aping of gentility by such persons as have no real claim to the quality has come in since the first Reform Act. Not so. Here is a passage from a letter to the Edinburgh Magazine' for September 1785, which might have appeared with equal freshness in the 'Saturday Review' of last week :

"The word gentleman seems to have extended its signification very considerably within these last few years, and in my memory to have comprehended almost every male being who wears a linen shirt. The gentleman, I was informed, who had come to take my measure for a pair of black plush breeches, was in the lobby; the gentleman of whom I had bought some cart harness had, it seems, done me the honour to call when I was abroad (ie., out walking or driving, not in foreign parts), and had left his name on a card, forsooth," &c.

The influence under which the minds of men revert fondly to bygone times is not altogether unkindly; "the pattern of the altar of the Lord which our fathers made" must ever be dearer to us than the latest improved pattern: but to fall foul of trifling failures in social respect, or to imagine a new-born uppishness in wageearners, betokens imperfect understanding or a dull imagination.

It sits with least grace on those

who have derived most advantage from the general advance in comfort and abundance of every sort.

But to quote Mr Leslie Stephen once more, "We must not cry over a dead donkey while the children are in want of bread." The times have a far graver aspect than any that have been touched on in the random and somewhat trivial paragraphs of this article. We cannot escape from our own shadows. The time may be at the door when the people shall be so well educated, and shall have learnt so perfectly the art of selfgovernment, that spoiled ballotpapers will be unknown, save such as may be defaced, of significant purpose, by poetical lampoons on the candidates. But also the time must be at hand when, if the population maintains its present rate of increase, standing-room on the globe will become a pressing problem. The strain of competition is intense; capital and labour seem to have thrown aside all semblance of goodwill; there is an anxiety on the minds of those who have

leisure to think that is not lessened by the thought that the administration of affairs in this country depends upon those who have little time for reflection, upon whom the question of a few shillings a-week more or less wages presses far more nearly than the guidance of an empire's destiny. There be many who sigh, "Ask for the old paths where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls," and to these it seems almost as if the dilemma were one fulfilling the condition stipulated for by the heathen poet

"Nor let the God in person stand display'd,

Unless the labouring plot deserve his aid."

HERBERT MAXWELL.

THREE SCOTTISH EARLDOMS.

THE reviewer who would keep abreast with Sir William Fraser's historical labours has his work cut out for him. Every year sees a fresh addition made to the already long array of sumptuous volumes, which are at once the envy of the book-collector and the pride of the fortunate few who honestly come by copies. We have for a short time had before us two goodly volumes on the Hamiltons of Haddington; and almost before we have had leisure to make our way through them, a triplet comes to swell their number, three volumes on the history and archives of the Earls of Leven and Melville. Sir William Fraser has done great service to Scottish History: he would do not little also to historians themselves if he would make public the secret which enables him, amid other duties, to produce and publish two or three large quartos per annum, with all the care, finish, and accuracy which characterise the result of years of labour. It is to be feared, however, that the secret would be as little generally applicable as the disclosure of Dr John Brown's painter as to his success in mixing his colours, and that few among us are prepared to face the amount of industry involved in securing the quick succession of this great series of Scottish family histories.

It is satisfactory to mark how widely Sir William Fraser's labours are spreading over Scotland. In the Scotts of Buccleuch,' the Douglas Book,' and the 'Book of Caerlaverock,' he has covered not merely the Borders, but the greater

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portion of the area to the south of the Forth. In the Earls of Haddington' he has taken us to East Lothian and the Merse, as in his 'Lennox,' the 'Montgomeries, Earls of Eglinton,' and the 'Colquhouns of Luss' he has let light in upon the history of the West. In his histories of the Wemysses of Wemyss, and now in the Leven and Melville volumes, Fife has been opened up to us; and crossing the Tay, in his 'Earls of Southesk' he has become the historian of Angus. Cromartie and its Earls have carried him into the very centre of the northern Highlands. We trust that he will hold on his course, and that before the Pentland Firth has set a natural boundary to his researches, he may give us a history of the House of Sutherland, which is decidedly wanted to round off his truly national collection of the great Scottish families.

Tynninghame, the pleasant seat of the Earls of Haddington,1 has long been known as the repository of a valuable mass of documents of national as well as family interest, and the researches of previous historical writers have prepared us to appreciate the importance of the manuscript collections formed by the first Earl. Not very many years ago, attention was sensationally directed to the Haddington archives by a rumour that the famous letter to the Pope, written by the Scottish barons in 1320, the original of the engraving in the Diplomata Scotia,' and of the photographic facsimile in the 'National Manuscripts of

1 Memorials of the Earls of Haddington. By Sir William Fraser, K.C.B., LL.D. In 2 vols. Privately printed. Edinburgh.

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