“---- at the voice arrived, they found Ulysses, Jove-beloved, compass’d about By Trojans, as the Lynxes in the hills, Athirst for blood, compass an antler’d Stag Pierced by an archer; while the blood is warm And his limbs pliable, from him he ’scapes; But when the feather’d barb hath quell’d his force, In some dark hollow of the mountain’s side, The hungry troop devour him; chance, the while, Conducts a Lion thither, before whom All vanish, and the Lion feeds alone; So swarm’d the Trojan powers numerous and bold, Around Ulysses, who with wary skill Heroic combated his evil day. But Ajax came, covered with his broad shield That seemed a tower, and at Ulysses’ side Stood fast; then fled the Trojans wide-dispersed.” Shakspere has the same idea, when he says-- “Lions make Leopards tame.” The magnanimity of the Lion is a very well-worn theme. Every one knows all about Androcles and the Lion; “the tale is somewhat musty” by this time. All the older poets have something about it--the writers of the golden age--before natural selection was thought of, and when animals of many kinds were credited with a vast amount of idyllic amiability, of which, alas! nobody believes them capable now. In the exquisite woodland scenery of “As You Like It,” a hungry Lioness that has just suckled her whelps, is accredited with a nobility to which she, assuredly, had no title. “A green and gilded Snake” has been frightened from the sleeping Oliver by Orlando-- “---- it unlinked itself, And with indented glides did slip away Into a bush: under which bush’s shade A Lioness, with udders all drawn dry, Lay couching, head on ground, with Cat-like watch, When that the sleeping man should stir, for ’tis The royal disposition of that beast To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.” We are not anxious to know when and how Shakspere gained his knowledge of wild beasts; we possess his descriptions, and that suffices for us. He may make Athenians speak like his fellow Englishmen; place Bohemia by the sea-side, and have the forest of Arden peopled with Lions. All that is of the least importance; for, may we not say of him, what he makes Helena say to Hermia?-- “---- your tongue’s sweet air, [Is] More tuneable than Lark to shepherd’s ear, When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.” The Lion is a solitary animal, hunting alone, except from the commencement of the breeding season, when his wife goes with him, up to the time when the babies are beginning to know how to take care of themselves. Until they have arrived at months of discretion, “the Lion tears in pieces enough for his whelps and strangles for his Lionesses, and fills his holes with prey and his dens with ravine.”