Ought we not to feel some shame if we have not advanced farther than this old teacher of nearly four hundred years ago? But it seems that the age of King George V. has still something to learn from the age of King Henry VIII. And but a few years later, in the reign of that famous King’s still more famous daughter, in “the spacious times,” when kindness to poor animals was but little thought of, do we not hear the voice of the great poet who is not of an age, but for all time, in an exquisite description of the miseries of the hunted hare?-- “By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill, Stands on his hinder legs, with listening ear, To hearken if his foes pursue him still. Anon their loud alarums he doth hear; And now his grief may be compared well To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell. “Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch Turn and return, indenting with the way; Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch; Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay. For misery is trodden on by many, And, being low, never relieved by any.” And here let me say that, if some of us have been loud in our protest against hare-hunting by schoolboys (and I refer especially to the case of the Eton beagles), it is because we believe it to be of paramount importance that this duty of kindness to animals should be inculcated upon the young; that this sacred instinct of compassion should be fostered in young minds; and that boys should be restrained from pursuits which tend to deaden this best of all human feelings. “’Tis education forms the common mind; Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.” And who shall say what harm may be done to character, if the men who are responsible for education allow it to be supposed by those under their charge that animal suffering is a thing of no account?