“My old lioness was never rough, and I have frequently, when she had stretched out to take a nap, sat upon her back for half an hour at a time, smoking my pipe or reading.
“I assure you I was very sorry to part with her, and when I saw her for the last time one moonlight night, I gave her a good hug and an affectionate kiss. She would have kissed me back if her mouth had not been too large; but she licked my hand to show that she loved me, then laid her big head upon the ground and went to sleep.
“Dear old lioness! I wonder if you ever think of me. I wonder if you would know me, should we ever see each other again.”
If our late minister to Berlin, the accomplished poet, linguist, and cosmopolitan, could give his attention to animals as friends and companions, there can be nothing belittling in reading their praises as said or sung by those whom we all delight to honour.
Hamerton, indeed, makes a comparison in which we come out but second best. He says: “How much weariness has there been in the human race during the last fifty years, because the human race can not stop politically where it was, and, finding no rest, is pushed to a strange future that the wisest look forward to gravely, as certainly very dark and probably very dangerous! Meanwhile, have the bees suffered any political uneasiness? have they doubted the use of royalty or begrudged the cost of their queen? Have those industrious republicans, the ants, gone about uneasily seeking after a sovereign? Has the eagle grown weary of his isolation and sought strength in the practice of socialism? Has the dog become too enlightened to endure any longer his position as man’s humble friend, and contemplated a canine union for mutual protection against masters? No; the great principles of these existences are superior to change, and that which man is perpetually seeking—a political order in perfect harmony with his condition—the brute has inherited with his instincts.”
Cowper, in The Task, devotes several pages to the proper treatment of animals, and expresses his admiration for their many noble qualities:
Distinguished much by reason, and still more
By our capacity of grace divine,
From creatures, that exist but for our sake,
Which, having served us, perish, we are held