king of beasts, and whom, if I had time, I could convict of
falsehood and forgery in almost every matter of fact which he has
related of this generous animal."

Better observation of it, however, from the time of Burchell to that of
Livingstone, shows that AEsop's account is on the whole to be relied on,
and that the lion is a thorough cat, treacherous, cruel, and, for the
most part, with a good deal of the coward in him.

The story of Androcles was related by Aulus Gellius, who extracted it
from Dion Cassius. Although likely to be embellished, there is every
likelihood of the foundation of the story being true. Addison relates
this, "for the sake of my learned reader, who needs go no further in it,
if he has read it already:--Androcles was the slave of a noble Roman who
was proconsul of Afric. He had been guilty of a fault, for which his
master would have put him to death, had not he found an opportunity to
escape out of his hands, and fled into the deserts of Numidia. As he was
wandering among the barren sands, and almost dead with heat and hunger,
he saw a cave in the side of a rock. He went into it, and finding at the
farther end of it a place to sit down upon, rested there for some time.
At length, to his great surprise, a huge overgrown lion entered at the
mouth of the cave, and seeing a man at the upper end of it, immediately
made towards him. Androcles gave himself up for gone;[140] but the lion,
instead of treating him as he expected, laid his paw upon his lap, and
with a complaining kind of voice, fell a licking his hand. Androcles,
after having recovered himself a little from the fright he was in,
observed the lion's paw to be exceedingly swelled by a large thorn that
stuck in it. He immediately pulled it out, and by squeezing the paw very
gently made a great deal of corrupt matter run out of it, which,
probably freed the lion from the great anguish he had felt some time
before. The lion left him upon receiving this good office from him, and
soon after returned with a fawn which he had just killed. This he laid
down at the feet of his benefactor, and went off again in pursuit of his
prey. Androcles, after having sodden the flesh of it by the sun,
subsisted upon it until the lion had supplied him with another. He lived
many days in this frightful solitude, the lion catering for him with
great assiduity. Being tired at length with this savage society, he was
resolved to deliver himself up into his master's han