All his descriptions of natural scenery and beauty show his intense sensibility to them, but nowhere is there a trace of the love or the comprehension of art, as the reflection from the mind of man of the nature and the beauty he so loved. Thus, after dwelling on a scene of exquisite natural beauty, he says, “Much more beautiful, because made truly after God’s own image, are the forms and colours of kind, and wise, and holy thoughts, words, and actions;” that is to say—although he knew not or made not the application—ART, in the high sense of the word, for that is the embodying in beautiful hues and forms, what is kind, wise, and holy; in one word—_good_. In fact, he says himself, art, physical science, and natural history, were not included within the reach of his mind; the first for want of taste, the second for want of time, and the third for want of inclination. 18. He says, “The whole subject of the brute creation is to me one of such painful mystery, that I dare not approach it.” This is very striking from such a man. How deep, consciously or unconsciously, does this feeling lie in many minds! Bayle had already termed the acts, motives, and feelings of the lower order of animals, “un des plus profonds abîmes sur quoi notre raison peut s’exerciser.” There is nothing, as I have sometimes thought, in which men so blindly sin as in their appreciation and treatment of the whole lower order of creatures. It is affirmed that love and mercy towards animals are not inculcated by any direct precept of Christianity, but surely they are included in its spirit; yet it has been remarked that cruelty towards animals is far more common in Western Christendom than in the East. With the Mahometan and Brahminical races humanity to animals, and the sacredness of life in all its forms, is much more of a religious principle than among ourselves. Bacon, in his “Advancement of Learning,” does not think it beneath his philosophy to point out as a part of human morals, and a condition of human improvement, justice and mercy to the lower animals—“the extension of a noble and excellent principle of compassion to the creatures subject to man.” “The Turks,” he says, “though a cruel and sanguinary nation both in descent and discipline, give alms to brutes, and suffer them not to be tortured.”