his violent methods of feeding. The Lion thus retorts:--"Savage I am, but no Creature can be called Cruel but what either by Malice or Insensibility extinguishes his natural Pity: The Lion was born without Compassion; we follow the instinct of our Nature; the Gods have appointed us to live upon the waste and spoil of other Animals, and as long as we can meet with dead ones, we never hunt after the Living. 'Tis only Man, mischievous Man, that can make Death a sport. Nature taught your stomach to crave nothing but Vegetables."--(Under favour of the Lion, if he meant to assert this universally of mankind, it is not true. However, what he says presently is very sensible.)--"Your violent fondness to change, and greater eagerness after Novelties, have prompted you to the destruction of Animals without Justice or Necessity.... The Lion has a ferment within him, that consumes the toughest Skin and hardest Bones, as well as the Flesh of all Animals without exception: Your squeamish Stomach, in which the Digestive Heat is weak and inconsiderable, won't so much as admit of the most tender Parts of them, unless above half the Concoction has been performed by artificial Fire beforehand; and yet what Animal have you spared, to satisfy the Caprices of a languid Appetite? Languid I say; for what is Man's Hunger if compared to the Lion's? Yours, when it is at the worst, makes you Faint; mine makes me Mad: Oft have I tried with Roots and Herbs to allay the violence of it, but in vain; nothing but large quantities of Flesh can any ways appease it."--Allowing for the Lion not having a prophetic instinct to take in every lusus naturæ that was possible of the human appetite, he was, generally speaking, in the right; and the Merchant was so impressed with his argument that, we are told, he replied not, but fainted away. O, Mr. Reflector, that I were not obliged to add, that the creature who thus argues was but a type of me! Miserable man! _I am that Lion._ "Oft have I tried with roots and herbs to allay that violence, but in vain; nothing but----." Those tales which are renewed as often as the editors of papers want to fill up a space in their unfeeling columns, of great eaters,--people that devour whole geese and legs of mutton _for wagers_, are sometimes attempted to be drawn to a parallel with my case. This wilful confounding of motives and circumstances, which make all the difference of moral or immoral in actions, just suits the sort of talent which some of my acquaintance pride themselves upon. _Wagers!_--I thank heaven, I was never mercenary, nor could consent to prostitute a gift (though but a left-handed one) of nature, to the enlarging of my worldly substance; prudent as the necessities, which that fatal gift have involved me in, might have made such a prostitution to appear in the eyes of an indelicate world.