and who has denounced with so eloquent indignation the pitiless wars “waged with defenceless innocence,” and the protean shapes of human selfishness, should yet have stopped short of the _final_ cause of them all, would be inexplicable but for the blinding influence of habit and authority. Nevertheless, his picture of the savagery of the Slaughter-House, and of some of its associated cruelties, is too forcible to be omitted: “To make him sport, To justify the phrensy of his wrath, _Or his base gluttony_, are causes good And just, in his account, why bird and beast Should suffer torture, and the stream be dyed With blood of their inhabitants impaled. Earth groans beneath the burden of a war Waged with defenceless Innocence: while he, _Not satisfied to prey on all around, Adds tenfold bitterness to death by pangs Needless, and first torments ere he devours_. Now happiest they who occupy the scenes The most remote from his abhorred resort. * * * * * Witness at his feet The Spaniel dying for some venial fault, Under dissection of the knotted scourge: _Witness the patient Ox, with stripes and yells Driven to the slaughter, goaded as he runs To madness, while the savage at his heels Laughs at the frantic sufferer’s fury spent Upon the heedless passenger o’erthrown_. He, too, is witness--noblest of the train Who waits on Man--the flight-performing Horse: With unsuspecting readiness he takes His murderer on his back, and, pushed all day, With bleeding sides, and flanks that heave for life, To the far-distant goal arrives, and dies! So little mercy shows, who needs so much! Does Law--so jealous in the cause of Man[?]-- Denounce no doom on the delinquent? None.”[198] XXXIII. OSWALD. 1730-1793. Amongst the less known prophets of the new Reformation the author of the _Cry of Nature_--one of the most eloquent appeals to justice and right feeling ever addressed to the conscience of men--deserves an honourable place. Of the facts of his life we have scanty record. He was a native of Edinburgh. At an early age he entered the English army as a private soldier, but his friends soon obtained for him an officer’s commission. He went to the East Indies, where he distinguished himself by his remarkable courage and ability. He did not long remain in the military life; and, having sold out, he travelled through Hindustan to inform himself of the principles of the Brahmin and Buddhist religions of the peninsula, whose dress as well as milder manners he assumed upon his return to England.