y should
only take off their high-crowned tiara.'--[Plutarch, Notable Sayings of
the Ancient King.]--The so devout Egyptians thought they sufficiently
satisfied the divine justice by sacrificing hogs in effigy and
representation; a bold invention to pay God so essential a substance in
picture only and in show.

I live in a time wherein we abound in incredible examples of this vice,
through the licence of our civil wars; and we see nothing in ancient
histories more extreme than what we have proof of every day, but I
cannot, any the more, get used to it. I could hardly persuade myself,
before I saw it with my eyes, that there could be found souls so cruel
and fell, who, for the sole pleasure of murder, would commit it; would
hack and lop off the limbs of others; sharpen their wits to invent
unusual torments and new kinds of death, without hatred, without profit,
and for no other end but only to enjoy the pleasant spectacle of the
gestures and motions, the lamentable groans and cries of a man dying in
anguish. For this is the utmost point to which cruelty can arrive:

"Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens,
tantum spectaturus, occidat."

["That a man should kill a man, not being angry, not in fear, only
for the sake of the spectacle."--Seneca, Ep., 90.]

For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beast
pursued and killed that has no defence, and from which we have received
no offence at all; and that which frequently happens, that the stag we
hunt, finding himself weak and out of breath, and seeing no other remedy,
surrenders himself to us who pursue him, imploring mercy by his tears:

"Questuque cruentus,
Atque imploranti similis,"

["Who, bleeding, by his tears seems to crave mercy."
--AEnead, vii. 501.]

has ever been to me a very unpleasing sight; and I hardly ever take a
beast alive that I do not presently turn out again. Pythagoras bought
them of fishermen and fowlers to do the same:

"Primoque a caede ferarum,
Incaluisse puto maculatum sanguine ferrum."

["I think 'twas slaughter of wild beasts that first stained the
steel of man with blood."--Ovid, Met., xv. 106.]

Those natures that are sanguinary towards beasts discover a natural
proneness to cruelty. After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to
spectacles of the sla