and routine are made to serve as foils for the scholar and actor, with his spiritual flexibility, elusive swiftness of resource, inner detachment and readiness. The attractiveness of fables is fourfold. First, the charm of all exercises of the dramatic art, namely, the incessant playing of human nature with its elementary experiences in and out of all sorts of masks and disguises of changing persons and situations. Second, the congruous mixture in them of the most extravagant impossibilities and absurdities with the plainest facts and truths; the union of sober realities of reason and nature with incredible forms, giving fresh shocks of wit and humor. Third, the constant sense of superiority and consequent elated complacency felt by the human auditor or reader over the animal impersonators of his nature, with the ludicrous contrasts and suggestions they awaken at every turn. Fourth, the interest and authority of the moral lessons, truisms though these may be, which they so vividly bring out. One cannot refrain from adding, in this connection, that there is a further form of the dramatic inhabitation of our humbler brethren the brutes, by kind and generous men, an example newly offered to notice by the officers and friends of our Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. These gentlemen, by a divine extension of their sympathy, quite in the spirit of the blessed Master who in his parables immortalized the hen, the sparrow, the raven, the ox, and the ass, transport themselves into the situation of the poor dumb creatures who are so often abused, feel and speak for them, and try to remedy their wrongs and to secure them their rights. They are spreading abroad a disposition and habit of kindness which will not stop with the first field of its application, but will extend to include in a finer and vaster embrace the whole world of childhood, and all the weak, degraded, and suffering classes of men. This development of sympathy is one of surprising beauty and promise. It tends to do for us what the doctrine of the transmigration of souls has done for the Hindoos,--affiliate us with the entire series of living beings in tender sentiment and mystery, as members of one family, under one law of destiny. It will indeed redeem the whole world of humanity if it shall be applied consistently to all as it was expressed by the famous Rarey in the practical principle he applied to the taming of unruly horses, namely: Free them from the spirit of opposition, and fill them with the spirit of obedient trust, by showing them how groundless is fear and how futile is resistance. The truth of God in the love of men will one day end crime, cruelty, terror, and misery. O blessed vision, how far away art thou?