Upon hunting and hawking the Doctor laid little stress, because both dogs and falcons in their natural state would have hunted and fowled on their own account. These sports according to his “poor way of thinking,” tended to deprave not so much the animals, as the human beings employed in them; for when they ceased to be necessary for the support or protection of man, they became culpable. But to train dogs for war, and flesh them upon living prisoners, as the Spaniards did, (and as, long since the decease of my venerable friend, Buonaparte's officers did in St. Domingo),—to make horses, gentle and harmless as well as noble in their disposition as they are, take a part in our senseless political contentions, charge a body of men, and trample over their broken limbs and palpitating bodies;—to convert the Elephant, whom Pope, he said, had wronged by only calling him half-reasoning, the mild, the thoughtful, the magnanimous Elephant, into a wilful and deliberate and cruel executioner, these he thought were acts of high treason against humanity, and of impiety against universal nature. Grievous indeed it is, he said, to know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain; but more grievous to consider that man, who by his original sin was the guilty cause of their general deprivation, should continue by repeated sins to aggravate it;—to which he added that the lines of the Roman Satirist, though not exactly true, were yet humiliating and instructive. _Mundi Principio indulsit communis conditor illis Tantum animas, nobis animum quoque, mutuus ut nos Adfectus petere auxilium et præstare juberet, Dispersos trahere in populum, migrare vetusto De nemore, et proavis habitatas linquere silvas; Ædificare domos, Laribus conjungere nostris Tectum aliud, tutos vicino limine somnos Ut conlata daret fiducia; protegere armis Labsum, aut ingenti nutantem vulnere civem, Communi dare signa tubâ, defendier îsdem Turribus, atque unâ portarum clave teneri. Sed jam serpentum major concordia; parcit Cognatis maculis similis fera; quando leoni Fortior eripuit vitam leo? quo nemore unquam Expiravit aper majoris dentibus apri? Indica tigris agit rabidâ cum tigride pacem Perpetuam: sævis inter se convenit ursis. Ast homini ferrum lethale incude nefandâ Produxisse parum est; quum rastra et sarcula tantum Adsueti coquere, et marris ac vomere lassi Nescierint primi gladios excudere fabri. Adspicimus populos, quorum non sufficit iræ Occidisse aliquem: sed pectora, brachia, vultum Crediderint genus esse cibi. Quid diceret ergo Vel quo non fugerit, si nunc hæc monstra videret Pythagoras: cunctis animalibus abstinuit qui Tanquam homine, et ventri indulsit non omne legumen._[1] [Footnote 1: The reader may call to mind the commencement of the Third Canto of Rokeby.