I was told by the Rev. G. Ouseley, an old man whose heart and soul were in the work of alleviating the wrongs of animals, that he once approached all the ministers of religion in a large town on the south coast, in the hope of inducing them to discountenance the cruel treatment of cats. He met with little encouragement; and one of the parsons on whom he called, the most influential in the place, bluntly ridiculed the proposal. “One can’t chuck a cat across the room,” he said, “without some old woman making a fuss about it.” Mr. Ouseley’s only comment, when he repeated this remark, was: “A Christian clergyman!” The following is an extract from a letter written at Jerusalem by my friend Mr. Philip G. Peabody, who has travelled very widely, and has been a most careful observer of the treatment accorded to animals, especially to horses, in the various countries visited by him: “When I reflect that for centuries, and from all parts of the world, the most earnest Christians have been coming here, and are still coming; that often they remain here until they die; that scores of great churches here are crowded with pious thousands; and that not one human being of them, so far as I can see or can learn, has the slightest regard for the cruelties occurring hundreds of times daily, so atrocious that the most heartless ruffian in Boston would indignantly protest against them--what am I to think of the value of Christianity to make men good, tender, and kind?” This opinion would seem to be corroborated by that of Dean Inge, who has described Man as “a bloodthirsty savage, not much changed since the first Stone Age.” Unfortunately, the Gloomy Dean, whose oracular utterances are so valued by journalists as providing excellent material for “copy,” does not himself extend any sympathy to those who are endeavouring to mitigate the savageness which he deplores, and which his religion has failed to amend.