n whom the bond? between God and
man? nay, between God and man, and every living creature of all flesh:
or my memory fails me with age. In Exodus God commanded that the cattle
should share the sweet blessing of the one day's rest. Moreover He
'forbade to muzzle the ox that trod out the corn. 'Nay, let the poor
overwrought soul snatch a mouthful as he goes his toilsome round: the
bulk of the grain shall still be for man.' Ye will object perchance
that St. Paul, commenting this, saith rudely, 'Doth God care for oxen?'
Verily, had I been Peter, instead of the humblest of his successors,
I had answered him. 'Drop thy theatrical poets, Paul, and read the
Scriptures: then shalt thou know whether God careth only for men and
sparrows, or for all his creatures. O, Paul,' had I made bold to say,
'think not to learn God by looking into Paul's heart, nor any heart of
man, but study that which he hath revealed concerning himself.'

"Thrice he forbade the Jews to boil the kid in his mother's milk; not
that this is cruelty, but want of thought and gentle sentiments, and so
paves the way for downright cruelty. A prophet riding on an ass did
meet an angel. Which of these two, Paulo judice, had seen the heavenly
spirit? marry, the prophet. But it was not so. The man, his vision
cloyed with sin, saw nought. The poor despised creature saw all. Nor is
this recorded as miraculous. Poor proud things, we overrate ourselves.
The angel had slain the prophet and spared the ass, but for that
creature's clearer vision of essences divine. He said so, methinks.
But in sooth I read it many years agone. Why did God spare repentant
Nineveh? Because in that city were sixty thousand children, besides much
cattle.

"Profane history and vulgar experience add their mite of witness. The
cruel to animals end in cruelty to man; and strange and violent deaths,
marked with retribution's bloody finger, have in all ages fallen from
heaven on such as wantonly harm innocent beasts. This I myself have
seen. All this duly weighed, and seeing that, despite this Francesco's
friends, the Stoics, who in their vanity say the creatures all subsist
for man's comfort, there be snakes and scorpions which kill 'Dominum
terra' with a nip, musquitoes which eat him piecemeal, and tigers and
sharks which crack him like an almond, we do well to be grateful to
these true, faithful, patient, four-footed friends, which, in lieu of
powdering us, put forth their strength to relieve our t