“At the time,” says Mr. Burchell, in his admirable Travels in Southern Africa, “when men first adopted the Lion as the emblem of courage, it would seem that they regarded great size and strength as indicating it; but they were greatly mistaken in the character they had given of this indolent skulking animal.” That an animal which seldom attacks by open force, but, stealing along with cautious and noiseless tread, silently approaches his victim, conceals himself in treacherous ambush, and at length, when he imagines his prey to be fairly within his reach, bounds forth upon him with an overwhelming leap, crushes him beneath the tremendous weight of his irresistible paw, tears him piece-meal with his talons, and, after having surfeited on his horrid meal, returns into the depths of his solitary concealment to sleep away the hours until his satiated appetite shall be again renewed, and his craving maw stimulate him to fresh exertion,--that such an animal should ever have been regarded as the type of courage and the emblem of magnanimity would indeed be most astonishing, were it not that men have in all ages been too prone to flatter superior power, and to offer at the shrine of greatness that homage which is due only to the good. True it is that on some occasions the Lion has been known, in the capriciousness of his disposition, to suffer his prostrate prey to escape but little injured from his clutch; but these instances are of rare occurrence, and may safely be referred either to his natural indolence, when excited neither by hunger nor by provocation, or to that intellectual debasement which among brutes is the usual concomitant of increased bulk and formidable strength. But to conclude from such whims and freaks, unaccountable as they may sometimes appear, that he is actuated by feelings of mercy, or by the natural impulse of a generous mind, would be about as reasonable as it would be to assume from the instances which are recorded of the justice and generosity of a Tamerlane or a Tippoo, that those monsters of sanguinary cruelty were in reality the mildest and most merciful of despots.