justified in seeking our pleasure in the act of slaughter itself. M. Miertsching, a Moravian missionary, who accompanied Captain M'Clure's Arctic expedition in the capacity of Esquimaux interpreter, describes, in his journal, an exciting conflict with some musk-oxen, In reviewing the entry on his return to Europe, he avows that he read it with feelings entirely different from those with which it was penned. He was pained, in the retrospect, to think that the first man upon which these inoffensive animals had ever set eyes should send a bullet into their brains in token of his dominion over them. But at the time, as he states, he was a hunter in heart and soul, and did not pause to reflect. This, we suspect, is the reason why thousands feel no compunction at pursuits which a tender spirit, like that of Cowper, regarded with aversion. The excitement of the chace drowns consideration. That the misgivings of men less eager for sport are not the consequences of a morbid sensitiveness is clear when the manly and practical mind of Scott rebelled against the proceeding. 'I was never quite at ease,' he said to Basil Hall, in conversation, 'when I had knocked down my black-cock, and going to pick him up, he cast back his dying eye with a look of reproach. I don't affect to be more squeamish than my neighbours, but I am not ashamed to say that use never reconciled me fully to the cruelty of the affair. At all events, now that I can do as I like without fear of ridicule, I take more pleasure in seeing the birds fly past me unharmed. I don't carry this nicety, however, beyond my own person.' Whatever may be urged in favour of shooting, angling with a worm, or any species of live bait, is absolute atrocity. Leave a fourth part of the worm,' says a modern writer, beyond the point of the hook, as you will thus afford it more room to wriggle, and appear lively in the water.' No more forcible argument could be penned in condemnation of the usage. Low as the feeling of worms may be, all the protracted pain of which they are capable is drawn forth by a treatment for which no sort of apology can be pleaded. can be pleaded. Boswell thought that nothing except Johnson's inflexible veracity could have accredited his assertion, that, as he was passing by a fishmonger who was skinning an eel alive, he heard him curse it because it would not lie still. Nevertheless many a boy may be heard denouncing the worm he is hooking for the same offence as was committed by the eel; and the child is too often in this respect the father of the man. Another pretence for cruelty is the aversion we take to some creatures because they are ugly. This is the common reason for killing toads. Frogs, in consequence of an unfortunate family resemblance, are involved in the calamity; for Pope says that the the only excuse he could ever hear urged for destroying them was, that they were so like toads. It must be admitted that there are creatures which are naturally offensive to us, and if they intrude into our houses, or multiply beyond measure, we must kill them if we cannot drive them away. But to massacre a toad when he is crawling along a path, merely because he does not come np to our ideas of loveliness, shows a wonderful indifference to the sacred rights of sentient beings. A considerate, not to speak of a gentle, heart would feel as Uncle Toby felt when he apostrophised the fly which was buzzing about him'Go, go, little fly; there is room enough in the world both for thee and for me.' That God's creatures should seem ugly to us, when nothing in nature can be ugly, is one of our imperfections; and instead of fiercely extirpating what we are too ignorant to admire, it should be a lesson of humility to us that we cannot see with more understanding eyes. It is a libel upon the Creator to condemn the image in which he has made His creatures, and to tear out their lives and deface their forms because they are not fashioned according to our notions of beauty. Closely allied to cruelty towards ugly animals is the cruelty which arises from what is called antipathy. Some people have an antipathy to spiders, others to cats, and, what shows the unreasonableness of the passion, the same creature which is the aversion of one person is the favourite of another. Antipathy, in general, means undefined fear, as Dr. Johnson has pointed out in the Rambler;' and fear is always cruel, since it seeks its safety in the destruction of the object of its dread. 'Because you are a coward, must I then die?' This is the detestable doctrine which the pusillanimous in troubled times have often applied to their opponents, and is a poor apology even when applied to brutes. Men and women too should be ashamed to convert their silly apprehensions into a sentence of death upon an innoxious creature, which never designed them any harm. Let them grow wise, and let the innocent animals live. To the fear of antipathy must be added the fear which springs from superstition. Don Quixote repeats the legend which avers that King Arthur did not die, but was turned into a raven; ‘for which reason,' continues the knight, it cannot be proved that from that time to this any Englishman hath killed one of these birds.' If the raven ever enjoyed this charmed life, he has since paid for the immunity. Most of the lower orders are in haste to exterminate both ravens and owls, because they imagine that the croak of the one and the hoot of the other announce some calamity past or to come, which is just as if, when intelligence was brought them of a piece of ill fortune, they hoped to cancel Let them be as cancel the mischief by murdering the messenger. timid as they please in the dark, but, because God has created the owl to mouse in the dusk, let them not suffer their fears to convert it into a harbinger of evil, and imagine that the music by which it expresses its joy is harshly sounding our doom. Let them leave it to gamekeepers to be the executioners of these lovely and useful birds of the night-to gamekeepers who, if they had their will, would allow no feathered thing to fly in the air except pheasants and partridges, nor any quadruped to run upon the earth except hares and rabbits. Another source of cruelty is temper. When it is remembered what a vast sum of misery temper causes in the world, how many homes are darkened, and how many hearts are saddened by it— when we consider that its persecutions have not even the purifying consequences of most other calamities, inasmuch as its effects upon its innocent victims are rather cankerous than medicinal-when we call to mind that a bright face and a bright disposition are like sunshine in a house, and a gloomy, lowering countenance as depressing as an arctic night, we must acknowledge that temper itself is only another form of cruelty, and a very bad form too. But it also prompts a vast deal of the cruelty which is ordinarily called by that name. A good groom, says Bishop Berkeley, will rather stroke than strike. An ill-tempered man commonly strikes instead of strokes. The enormities which have been perpetrated upon animals in fits of rage are past counting up. How have dogs been lashed and kicked, how have beasts of burthen been whipped and spurred, how have sheep and oxen been goaded till their sides ran down with gore. Often the provocation was only that the beast did not display more intelligence and endurance than had been given it by God-that, knowing no better, it had made some slight mistake-that, weary and foot-sore, it did not manifest the same speed and spirit as when fresh and untravelled-often only that it had the misfortune to have a drunken master. There are people indeed who will plead passion as an apology for their violence; but one vice can never extenuate another, and it will not atone for our cruelty that it had ill temper for its parent. He who reflects upon his own mistakes and misdoings will excuse the fault of a dumb creature that has not his reason to direct it, and will learn patience if only in pity to himself. Man is worse than the most venomous reptile or the most savage beast if he maltreats the creatures which serve his needs, since no beast is under equal obligations to the animal world. 'The wolf who from the nightly fold Nor Nor wore her warming fleece; nor has the steer, With no sort of conscience can we use animals as culprits when their sinews are the very life of ours. When we ride, we sit upon the skin of the pig; when we walk, we tread upon the skin of the bullock; we wear the skin of the kid upon our hands, and the fleece of the sheep upon our backs. More than half the world are human beings in sheep's clothing. We eat the flesh of some creatures, of some we drink the milk, upon others we are dependent for the cultivation of the soil; and if it is a pain to us to suffer hunger and cold, we should be scrupulous to avoid inflicting wanton misery upon the animals by means of which we are warmed and fed. Mr. Waterton witnessed the annual ceremony at Rome of pronouncing a public benediction upon the beasts of burden. This humane naturalist rejoiced to think that the blessing would ensure them better treatment from their owners. Whether or no the effect was what he anticipated, there is a practical benediction which is for ever proceeding from the hearts of all good men, and which shows itself in admiration of the animal world as the work of God, in sympathy with them as sentient beings, and in gratitude to them as benefactors to ourselves. ART. VII-1. General Statement of the Past and Present Condition of the several Manufacturing Branches of the War Department, as called for by a Letter dated 8th May, 1856, presented to both Houses of Parliament by Her Majesty's Command. By John Anderson, Inspector of Machinery. 2. Fourth Report from the Select Committee on the Army before Sebastopol, with the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix. 1855. 3. Report from the Select Committee on Contracts for Public Departments, together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix and Index. 1856. 4. The Handbook for Travellers in Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire, including the Isle of Wight. 1858. 5. On the Government Factory, Waltham Abbey. Baddeley, Royal Artillery. 1857. IN By Major N the year 1716 the brass guns which Marlborough had taken from the French were being recast in the Royal Gun Foundry in Moorfields, when a young Swiss named Andrew Schalch, who was accidentally present, remarking the dampness of the moulds, and foreseeing the inevitable result, warned Colonel Armstrong, the then Surveyor-General, against being too close a spectator of of the operation. As Schalch foretold, an explosion took place, and many workmen were killed. 'It's an ill wind that blows nobody good,' says the old proverb, and the bursting of the gun was the making of the young foreigner's fortune, for in a few days an advertisement appeared in one of the public papers requesting him to call upon Colonel Andrews, as the interview may be for his advantage.' Andrew Schalch attended accordingly, and was at once intrusted with the duty of seeking out a better locality for the casting of the royal ordnance. He selected a rabbit-warren at Woolwich, as the best site within twelve miles of the metropolis, for the threefold reason that it was dry, near to the river, and in the immediate neighbourhood of loam for the moulds. Strangely enough, it has since been proved that the great nation of antiquity with whom the British possess so many qualities in common, had been here before. The Romans, whose second station on the Watling Street out of London is supposed to have been at Hanging Wood, close at hand, seem to have appropriated the sloping ground on which the original gun factory stands for the purposes of a cemetery, for on digging the foundations of some new buildings urns of their manufacture were discovered in large quantities, and a very beautiful sepulchral vase, which is now in the museum of the Royal Artillery Institution. Thus where the conquerors of the old world lay down to their last rest, we, the Romans of the present age, forge the arms which make us masters of an empire beyond the dreams of the imperial Cæsars. As the visitor enters the great gate of the Arsenal he finds no difficulty in tracing the whereabouts of the labours of Andrew, for straight before him, with a stately solemnity which marked the conceptions of its builder Vanbrugh, stands the picturesque gun factory, with its high pitched roof, red brickwork, and carved porch, looking like a fine old gentleman amid the factory ranges which within these few years have sprung up around. It is impossible to contemplate this building without respect, for forth from its portals have issued that victorious ordnance which since the days of George II. has swept the battle-grounds of the old and the new world. Up to as late a date as the year 1842 the machinery within these stately old edifices was almost as antiquated in character as themselves. The three great boringmills, moved by horses, which had been imported in 1780 as astonishing wonders from the Hague, were the only engines used in England in making her Majesty's ordnance till fifteen years ago. Such was the state of efficiency of the oldest of the three great manufacturing departments of the Arsenal! The more modern departments, known as the Royal Carriage Factory and the |