OUR BROTHERS, THE BEASTS SCHOPENHAUER rules the world for him who thinks. The infinite and eternal substance, the real essence of existence he declared to be Will; the whole of creation, including mankind, being substance of the Omnipotent Will. He maintained that Christian morality but for the defect of ignoring the animal world would manifest the utmost similarity to that of Brahmanism and Buddhism, and is only less emphatically expressed and more deficient in logic. Schopenhauer's ethical system touching the subject of kindness to animals compared with the Buddhistic precept is well summed up thus. With Buddha it seems to repose simply upon the instinct of compassion; Schopenhauer gives it a philosophical basis. With him animals are imperfect men, incarnations of the universal Will in a more primitive form. Their kinship to mankind is no mere figure of speech, but the simplest matter of fact. The difference between the self-consciousness, relegated to us by the author of The Religion of Nature1 in distinction from that unconsciousness he transfers theoretically to the beautiful creature world, can only be one of degree, varying individually in each man and beast in an ascending scale, from the capacity of feeling joy and grief, affection and pain, to that further spiritual consciousness of which the highest manifestation is sympathy and love for our kind. They suffer and die for us; we owe them love and consideration. The fact that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals secured upwards of eight thousand convictions for one year has been charitably set down to thoughtlessness and ignorance. Spain and Italy are proverbially infamous in their treatment of animals, and after a sojourn in France we cannot say that indifference to the animal sufferings is confined to the lower classes. Our fascinating friends across the Channel have reason to retort "Take thought on your own savage ways,' but in England it is universally stated that we have so far advanced beyond other countries as to give more liberal support to the societies for the protection of animals. In the marked beauty of Varengeville, on the coast of France, we The Religion of Nature, by E. K. Robinson. realise the deserved praise of la belle Normandie. From the balcony of the little house where I lived through last summer and autumn I looked across an undulating valley, clothed in purple and gold, aflame with yellow broom, tall heather in perfection of colour, and bracken swept by les brises affolées from sea or land. They sing up to the dark pines which skirt the valley on the south, east, and west. These skirting pine woods are veritable harp-strings for the hushing music of winds. The sea alternates from chrysoprase to sapphire, and the sky is of that cerulean blue which is the French painter's delight. When the wind blows from the east the strike of every hour is borne through the pine woods from the old Varengeville church, which almost hangs over the sea, for it stands close to the edge of the high white cliffs, washed by the waves. Close by is the celebrated Manoir Angot, bombarded and partly brought to the ground by the English, where François I. lived with a great retinue and chased the wild boar. Up the road which passed my house, the bright orange-tiled roof above the pines is an endowed summer school for Rouennais children, who, dressed like little pilgrims, pass to and fro singing in a high treble old French songs, notably that of the martyrdom of St. Catherine : La Sainte-Catherine, Fille d'un roi païen. Son père était barbare, Sa mère ne l'était pas. And so on gleefully through some twenty verses to the tragic finale. The tragedy of animal suffering which you meet at every turn none could tolerate but such a monster as the pagan king of that bloodcurdling old nursery song. Chars à bancs laden with hulking humanity inside and out, drawn by scarecrow horses covered with sores, in acute raw-necked misery, urged on by the lash when to threats and imprecations they object to move, were every-day sights. As the season wanes, dogs left by callous owners to the tender mercies of brutal guardians rush from house to house searching for food, living skeletons, with bones protruding through their skins, many of them half-drowned, with the tell-tale stone still hanging round their necks. In one case I myself had to cut on the instant the soaking rope from the neck of a dog that crawled to my house in the agony of suffocation. I think of another little French hamlet in a green valley where I found myself one day, of the pink and yellow cottages with their bright roofs, glowing in the sunlight, set within fair flowering orchards under a canopy of blue, little streets through which I saw the shimmering sea, while my ears rang with the cries of agony which echoed through them. A peasant told me: 'Ce sont des veaux; voilà vingt-quatre heures qu'ils crient la soif.' You must give them to drink, I answered. I recall her brutal laughter: 'Dieu! Cela gâtera leur chair.' And, to my look of horror, the shrug and the laugh: Dame, que voulez-vous? Ce ne sont que des veaux!' And when I turned from her disgusted, followed by their cries of anguish, it was to find myself confronted by an object four foot high, with eyes asquint, his tongue lolled from a twisted mouth, his arms like fins protruded from misshapen shoulders. His legs were bowed, his feet reversed. This was poor Baptiste, a hunted dwarf, for he was butt of the whole village. Close by there stood the 'Sovereign's Mill,' which had been silent now for generations. There was a fair to-day, here at the very gates of Death. The merry-go-round was full of happy children. The lusty stroke of the blacksmith's hammer at the glowing forge kept time to dance and song. The merry-goround and marionettes touched the gates of Death, the closed gates of an ancient château on whose inmates, descended from the mighty kings of France, had just befallen one of the greatest tragedies of our time. These are the ironies which stagger and dismay us unless we see the breaking light of the state beyond, that lacks not, but gives to right the right—a state where the Sovereign's Mill turns for ever unbroken to the music of pure waters, where Baptiste the crooked dwarf will be made straight, the brute peasant made human, the tortured calves given to drink. In our chance travelling encounters with loquacious fellow-travellers, who are strangers to us, our attention may be distracted from our own cogitations by a passing word, a trivial remark, leading to a topic which interests us, and before we have time to realise it we are unconsciously taking a silent yet eloquent part in the conversation. The purgatory of our position is when in a foreign country we hear our national beliefs or prejudices made light of. Prudence forbids our interference lest we transgress the rules of social politeness. Our national courtesy, we feel, must be upheld, and in France especially we are amongst polite people. We also resent that behind our back they may call us bizarre! On such occasions it is well to suffer and be still. Travelling during the last hunting season in the same compartment from Paris to Y with two French gentlemen and a lady equipped for the 'Chasse à Courre,' from a conversation in which they all talked at once, the words of one caught my ear: 'Quel bel équipage que celui du Marquis d'X-: "Quelle chasse mardi dernier!" and the answer of his friend, 'Une chasse inouïe,' and the amazon in her corner, Une chasse épatante!' The hunt of Tuesday they discussed I knew must be the Chasse au Cerf,' the Chasse au Sanglier having been rendered practically impossible in the Forêt d'Y— by the migration of the wily animals far and wide, who objected to having their snouts bumped and caught in by the wire fencing erected to restrain the small game. The conversation continued, the first speaker complimenting the lady on her riding-'Madame suivait à merveille.' She smiled, and said in English: 'It was almost like an English fox-hunt, there were so many obstacles, so much jumping.' The first speaker added, 'Enfin rien ne manquait-la forêt, la plaine, et l'eau,' and his friend, 'Le bat l'eau 2 c'était ravissant, n'est-ce pas ?' They lauded the hounds, the horses, and, not least, themselves. I expected to hear some note of consideration, perhaps admiration, for the noble quarry, so distinguished for its gentle, sensitive qualities. They dwelt with enthusiasm on the manner in which the pack had taken their victim in the water. The lady slapped her knee with her riding-whip, and with a shoulder-shrug confessed-but very apologetically, and as if ashamed for her remark-that she thought the death struggle had been perhaps a little too prolonged.' She used the expression Cela m'était un peu désagréable,' and added, 'Où était le pistolet?' The gentlemen both laughed merrily, and one said: Comment! Madame n'a pas vu? il a raté.' Then all three laughed, and spoke of the English stag-hunting with the Windsor buckhounds. Of course they ridiculed the use of the cart, which they spoke of as un omnibus. The temptation was almost irresistible to say: 'A gilded chariot would be poor honour to convey home to peace so great a hero, martyred for your day's enjoyment.' They were apparently unaware that our humane King had some years ago condemned this pastime. Their sporting talk took me back to a wonderful chasse-a boar-hunt I had followed some years ago with the équipage in question-with the 'Bat l'eau' and the 'Hallali ' in the lake, and to the day I had first seen a wild boar domesticated at a farmhouse in the outskirts of the Forêt d'Y- (not so exquisite as his name, for he was called 'Eglantine'). He was a merry, engaging rascal, whose great allies and playmates were the pack of boarhounds, with whom he romped and fraternised, for whom he played quarry, running till he dropped, providing for his friends, human and canine, many a fine run, hunters, hounds, and sweet Eglantine' always returning home together on the best of terms. At last, as might be expected, he showed character, took the game into his own hands, and refused to go the pace. It is a matter of history that a brutal and ignorant aristocracy lived for nothing but to fight, to hunt, and to kill. The Franks were always renowned as hunters. Among the Merovingians was 2 Opinions are, I believe, divided as to whether the old term Bat l'eau stood for 'beating the water' or for La Bête à l'eau,' 'the beast in the water.' Dagobert the First, the most famous of royal hunters. Childebert the Second first developed into a rudimentary art and science the chase of wild animals, which has existed from all ages. Charlemagne in later days gave preference to wolf, bear, and boar hunting. It is historical that St. Louis created in France 'la charge de grand veneur,' and that from his reign date the first rules of 'La Vénerie' of France which have established 'la chasse à courre' as a memorable institution. Though imposing and stately, the decorative side of La Grande Venerie in the time of the Bourbon dynasty lost somewhat in artistic value through too much theatrical display. In refinement of cruelty it has remained the same. The methods of taking the quarry were various. In comparing past and present methods of this lustful sport, we are forced to acknowledge that the rules governing it in the Dark Ages which we hear spoken of as less civilised were really more civilised than now, for those rules comported more rough justice than the rules of our own day. It is strange to acknowledge it, seeing that we boast of our humane modes of thinking, and believe that we are psychically in advance of those backward times, and that the day of mercy has dawned. The spacious Château d'X- was built under the direction of the present marquis. The exterior is in the style of the renaissance of François the First. The decorations of the interior vary from Louis the Fourteenth and Louis the Fifteenth. The sleepy river is bordered by the forest; it flows past the wide demesnes of the château in the shape of the letter S on its way to join its confluent at six kilometres distant. Great brown barges, heavy laden, with long ropes, trailed by eight fine horses with plaited manes and tails, caparisoned in the old picturesque harness, are less frequently seen nowadays, for steam traction is in vogue. This morning the music of the horse-bells I have heard a long way off heralding the slow approach of one of these silent vessels long before it came in sight. When at last, towed by ropes of great length, one came and went, winding down to L, gone out of view through the grey stillness, like a reminiscence and echo of old times, there was the drift of autumn leaves, feathers, sticks, waifs and strays of the dying season to watch, floating down the nonchalant river, passing and repassing each other on their unconscious way to win the ocean. A jostling race and aimless, suggesting the hustling race of human life, in which the last to start is as likely to win as the first. In the forest which borders. this sleepy river you hear perhaps far off the blast of the ‘BienAller,' and know that a stag's race for his life is near the finish. A rendezvous of the Chasse à Courre' at the doors of the château is always more than usually picturesque. The equipage is unrivalled. The pack of from seventy to eighty staghounds is beyond criticism. On the flank of each hound the capital letter is branded, so that the one who strays shall be recognised far and wide. The costume |