Sheep live in society very mildly and agreeably; their character passes for being a very gentle one, because we do not see the prodigious quantity of animals devoured by them. We may, however, conceive that they eat them very innocently and without knowing it, just as we do when we eat Sassenage cheese. The republic of sheep is a faithful image of the age of gold. A hen-roost exhibits the most perfect representation of monarchy. There is no king comparable to a cock. If he marches haughtily and fiercely in the midst of his people, it is not out of vanity. If the enemy is advancing, he does not content himself with issuing an order to his subjects to go and be killed for him, in virtue of his unfailing knowledge and resistless power; he goes in person himself, ranges his young troops behind him, and fights to the last gasp. If he conquers, it is himself who sings the "_Te Deum._" In his civil or domestic life, there is nothing so gallant, so respectable, and so disinterested. Whether he has in his royal beak a grain of corn or a grub-worm, he bestows it on the first of his female subjects that comes within his presence. In short, Solomon in his harem was not to be compared to a cock in a farm-yard. If it be true that bees are governed by a queen to whom all her subjects make love, that is a more perfect government still. Ants are considered as constituting an excellent democracy. This is superior to every other state, as all are, in consequence of such a constitution, on terms of equality, and every individual is employed for the happiness of all. The republic of beavers is superior even to that of ants; at least, if we may judge by their performances in masonry. Monkeys are more like merry-andrews than a regularly governed people; they do not appear associated under fixed and fundamental laws, like the species previously noticed. We resemble monkeys more than any other animals in the talent of imitation, in the levity of our ideas, and in that inconstancy which has always prevented our having uniform and durable laws. When nature formed our species, and imparted to us a certain portion of instinct, self-love for our own preservation, benevolence for the safety and comfort of others, love which is common to every class of animal being, and the inexplicable gift of combining more ideas than all the inferior animals together--after bestowing on us this outfit she said to us: "Go, and do the best you can." There is not a good code of laws in any single country. The reason is obvious: laws have been made for particular purposes, according to time, place, exigencies, and not with general and systematic views. When the exigencies upon which laws were founded are changed or removed, the laws themselves become ridiculous. Thus the law which forbade eating pork and drinking wine was perfectly reasonable in Arabia, where pork and wine are injurious; but at Constantinople it is absurd.