In similar manner there is no sense of kinship with the winged children of the air, with the four-footed dwellers beside us on the earth. Almost the only recognition we give them is maltreatment. At other times the indifference of our unspeakable fatuity rises in a dust cloud between us and them. Of gratitude for their companionship, their aid, their patience, their many virtues, there is not a trace in those who use them and abuse them, no more than there is gratitude for the beauty of the rose or the fragrance of the violet. As 'the winds of March take the world with beauty,' every pasture and coppice is full of blossom, passed unnoticed by thousands in every daily country walk; so in the same manner do the multitudes trample down, and pass by, the ineffable charm and fragrance of disregarded affections, and unappreciated qualities, in the other races of earth. Hang a poor woodland bird in a cage, if you can bear to look on such a captive, above a blossoming honeysuckle or hawthorn, and note his anguish of remembrance, his ecstasy of hope, his frantic effort to be free. But the accursed wires are between him and the familiar blossoms, between him and the blue sky; in a little while he realises that he is a prisoner; the fluttering joy goes out of his heart and his wings; his feathers grow ruffled and dull, his eyes are veiled, he sits motionless and heartbroken, and the breeze of the springtime blows past him, and never more will bear him on its buoyant way. Living wild song-birds are sold at a halfpenny each by thousands in the London slums, and as many more die--nay, thrice as many more--before they reach the streets, packed close and jammed together in hampers and crates. Yet the English Home Secretary, on being asked by a deputation to put an end to this abominable traffic, answered that it was desirable to do as little as possible in the way of legislation! For legislators, always eager to make cruel and coercive laws, prefer to let humane ones be substituted by what they call 'the gradual education of the people.' But this gradual education is so extremely gradual that its progress is imperceptible; it may even be justly suspected that it is chiefly a backward movement; and such education, as far as education by example goes, is hindered, not helped, by what are called the cultured classes. In this, our own present day, bull fights become at once popular wherever they are allowed, and with women as much so as with men, and I am certain that if the gladiatorial shows of Imperial Rome were introduced at Olympia the London crowds would in the main be delighted with them, and the London women would eagerly turn down their thumbs.