sidered, and the interests of the heart cultivated. I have felt strong and sure anticipations of the progress of knowledge and virtue; and if, like an old man, I dream dreams, they are at least of a consolatory cast, and, I will confess it, they leave a firm and indelible impression on my mind in its more waking moments.

Penn. My heart is moved within me, and my soul bears witness to the truths which thou utterest. There is already spread over the creation the dawn of a brighter day; and I trust we shall live to see its more complete and entire effulgence. It is the day-spring from on high which visiteth us: and peace and good will among men are wafted along on the wings of the morning. But the minds of men must be prepared for the influx of better things by due discipline and reformation of habits.

THE LION FIGHT.

ONE of the most pleasing reflections for those of our generation who are in the habit of watching the progress of the human mind, and following those rapid strides in civilization which may be so justly styled the glory of our day, is the obliteration of the coarse and brutal diversions, which have too long imparted a character of ferocity to the habits and recreations of the noble and plebeian vulgar. That refinement of manners, and a more just appreciation of right and wrong, as regards the duties of social man and the value of humanity, have already made great progress in diminishing these detestable scenes, is known by looking into the records of our past history, and comparing the manners of our own time with the disclosures that there unfold themselves. This advancement in refined manners is the best proof that the evils of this kind which remain, will at no great distance of time disappear before the censures of public opinion. Leaving them to this remedy appears far preferable to exterminating them at once, by any sweeping legislative enactments. The laws as they stand are sufficient to put down such sports as are of a character to promote breaches of the peace, and endanger public security; that is, if the authorities do their duty. In some parts of the country, however, there are magistrates who are reluctant to interrupt brutal exhibitions, because they participate largely with the mob in the vulgar pleasure they afford. Let Mr. Peel look to it, and take care that bull-baiting and pugilistic magistrates be no longer suffered to hold the commissions which they disgrace, and of a main rule of which they live in open violation. It is a curious circumstance that the agricultural population of Great Britain, at the present moment, should be the most backward in intellect. That part of the population which is employed in commerce and manufactures, has a far greater share of knowledge and refinement. In like manner, the better class of merchants and men of business are far superior to the country gentlemen in acquirements, manners, and the savoir faire. The distance of a town from the coast, and from commercial and manufacturing cities, imparts to it, as a whole, a similar character of backwardness, especially if it has remained stationary in size, can boast of no manufactories, and its inhabitants, from their non-intercourse with the rest of the country, are found clinging to those ridiculous ideas of class and gentility, from the squire to the attorney, from the parson's wife to the exciseman's, that were formerly so rife in the provinces. When one visits such a place, and ob

serves its anti-social habits, caste only visiting with caste, and that with more ceremony than nobles receive visitors with in town, when few new buildings appear, and the ill character of local regulations comes under the observation of every stranger, a pretty close guess may be formed of the state of the population, its bias, degree of mental culture, and amusements. Such towns seem to slumber in a stagnant existence. They frequently lie out of the high roads, but do not depend for character upon remoteness from the capital, but upon commerce and manufactures, and whether men of the new or old time are leading residents in them,-in short, whether any exciting cause has acted upon them, and infused into them the spirit so visible at present in most parts of the country. In places of this character the assizes are a sort of jubilee. The dignity of justice, the misery of crime, the trial and execution of the criminal, never cross the minds of the people. The gaiety of the assize ball, and the sermon before the judges, the sheriffs' show, and the feasting of his men, the throng which business or pleasure may allure thither for a week, embrace the entire thoughts and conversation of the inhabitants for the preceding six months. The dinners and bustle are perhaps the only incidents that resuscitate the neighbourhood for a time from Lethean dullness; while the money the good tradesmen pocket, helps them through the rest of the year. Thus this scene of misery is looked upon as a sort of" revival” (as the methodists style a fresh outbreaking among their converts) from the experience of which they fall back to their dormouse-like slumber and monotony. To places of this description an assemblage of high or low blackguards, gamblers, and thieves, at a boxing match, a dog-fight, a bull-bait, (or a bloody combat of gladiators, could such a thing be now) is esteemed a sort of God-send. The inns are filled, drunkenness requires liquor, and money, that covers every sin, is plentifully pocketed. Those who might and ought to prevent such vicious exhibitions, refrain from interference, that their townsmen may be benefited; tacitly acknowledging that they fear the tradesmen and pedlars of the neighbourhood may frown upon them, and besides that sports of the kind have been customary from time immemorial, and therefore, like Court of Chancery abuses, must have every indulgence conceded to them, from being ancient usages.

These observations struck me forcibly as I saw the people crowding to the Lion fight at Warwick. I was walking on the road which leads from Leamington to Warwick, and a friend coming up at that :noment drove me over in his tilbury. I had resided some weeks at that beautiful watering-place, and often entering the county town, had been struck with its dullness and the solitude of its streets. My inquiries respecting its inhabitants were, with some few exceptions, not at all favourable to their social habits, their manners, and the culture and liberality of their minds. Plodding on in the steps of their fathers, jealous of the rising town of Leamington, which is rapidly outshining them in all but situation, (which latter few places in the kingdom can equal,) the town seems losing ground, and is decidedly among the class of places I have before characterized. With the exception of a few of the sober inhabitants, the lion fight was hailed with as great pleasure as the recent pugilistic contests were that have so disgraced it. The mayor, to his own honour, but much to the astonishment and in

dignation not merely of the lower and coarser classes, but of some of the leading men of the town, had prohibited a boxing match lately, for the first time, within the limits of the borough. There was a handsome house and grounds just without the bounds of the mayor's authority, adjoining the road to Birmingham, the affluent owner of which sympathised strongly with the vagabonds of the ring, and permitted the fight to take place under his own windows, pretty certain of no interruption from that magistrate there.

But to return to the present subject;—we had crossed the bridge looking upon the castle, one of the most beautiful relics that remain to our day of Gothic times, before I began to ask myself whether, disavowing and execrating such scenes as I do-whether, loving an animal almost as well as myself, I ought, or could conscientiously see such a sight. It is true I had gone to see many exhibitions that I would not uphold, and I had made it all through my life a rule to see every thing that fell in my way. I had no wager depending, for I never bet about any thing. I had little curiosity to witness animal torture—but should I ride by and not look at it? Were I passing a public road during a boxing match, I should stop, perhaps, and look on a moment; but then I would not go that road if I knew it would happen in my path before I set out. In the present instance it was different. I knew the business going on, and openly condemned it; yet I was entering the town where it was actually happening! I could satisfy myself conscientiously, however, that I went only to condemn, and to furnish myself with weapons to urge against such practices. It was a singular affair—a lion and a dog fight! I might learn something, even at such a barbarous exhibition.-I went forward.

Warwick, which is becoming an adjunct to the fives-court in St. Martin's-lane, a rendezvous of black legs, thieves, and bruisers, is situated on an eminence, the summit of which it covers, so that it is entered on every side by an ascending road, except on that where the castle stands, clothed in gloomy magnificence. There the rock rises abruptly from the Avon. The place called the factory, in which the arena was comprised, lay on the opposite side of the town from the river, and had been lately occupied by some manufacturing speculators, whose failure had terminated the labours of the only establishment of manufacturing industry worthy mention in the town. Warwick and the neighbourhood had been placarded with notices of this disgraceful fight long before it took place, and there was ample time for the magistrates to have prevented it, or to have satisfied any scruples as to their right of so doing, which the patrons of the combat might have urged. I am, therefore, justified in thinking it was the unwillingness, rather than the supineness of the authorities, which occasioned their breach of a public duty. It was stated in the journals, and remains to this hour uncontradicted, that in a pugilistic contest, got up a few months ago, under the express patronage of the good burgesses of the corporation, magistrates mingled fraternally with the canaille upon the race-course, where the stand, the property of the town, was let for hire on the occasion, and special constables are alleged to have been sworn in to keep the peace! What is Mr. Peel about, that he suffers such doings! Are the gentlemen of Warwickshire too powerful for him?—but I am digressing. The centre of a court, formed by the

building of the before mentioned factory, was surrounded by seats, which were let for hire. An Englishman will do any thing for money, say some of the continental observers of our customs; and there is too much truth in the observation. These seats were let for lucre, the fight was got up for the sake of gambling, and the Warwick people welcomed it with all its barbarism, ferocity, and crime, for the sake of the money which it put into their pockets. The cage in which the combat took place was formed of iron bars, wide enough to suffer the dogs to escape, if too hard pressed; the managers of this brutal exhibition taking a lesson from their bull-baiting habits, in which it is customary to tie the suffering animal to a stake that the dogs may worry him, while he is deprived of more than a limited motion. The lion was a noble-looking animal, but bred in a domestic state, reared in a confined space, and rendered by intercourse with man the most gentle of his kind; it seemed as if his education had divested him of fighting instinct. He followed his inhuman keeper like a dog, glancing curiously at the scene around, with an air of apparent reliance upon those with whom he had been fainiliar, that there could be no mischief intended him in what he saw. They now got ready to let go the dogs. At this moment the expression on the countenances of the spectators was strongly indicative of their varied feeling. On some, apprehension for their personal safety was strongly marked, others had an expression of curiosity. Indignation at seeing a creature so gentle, brought out to be worried by the vilest species of dog, was seen on the visages of a few, but by far the greater part were stamped with that mixture of brainless indurated blackguardism, and brutal habit, which is so observable in the faces of the majority of the lovers of such scenes, and they showed a most savage air of eagerness and pleasure. With mouths open, and eyes expanded, they shouted when the animals were brought forth; sometimes almost breathless, then with a hurried greediness they yelled their hideous and disgusting joy to each other, and revelled in the barbarism of the exhibition. It is useless to detail the different attacks of the animals, which displayed all that indiscriminating ferocity for which the bull-dog is so remarkable. The newspapers have given the minute details. Mangled and bleeding from the paws of the lion, which he used only defensively, the dogs sneaked off, or were taken away. The combat was a second time renewed, in which the advantage was claimed for the dogs, but the stage floor was so smooth that the lion could not keep his feet, and his owner gave in for him, it being evident that his tameness had excluded even a knowledge of his own powers of defence. The life of the lion was not at all endangered, while the dogs were severely though almost undesignedly mangled by the claws of their antagonist.

I left the place with disgust. It was a scene calculated to degrade the being of reason, and to elevate the brute; whether the unshaken courage of the dogs be considered, or the mildness and ignorance of his own power which the lion displayed, be taken into account. The distress of the latter animal, in the second attack, seemed to have arisen principally from his not being able to keep his footing. It appeared as if he imagined he must not injure his enemies, do what they might; or as if he did not think them worthy of him. What feeling the owner of an animal, so attached to him as this lion-so gentle and docile, can

have-how he reconciles to his coarse and degraded mind his barbarous usage of the friendly quadruped, it is difficult to conceive. The more generous feelings of human nature could have no place in such a bosom. Never was there a more complete exemplification of the man-degrading effect of such exhibitions than this case afforded. The owners of the dogs also-but they are generally (if they belong to the race who breed such vermin about London) scarcely equal to the animal part of creation which they abuse. I have seen a bull-fight in Spain, but there man is the combatant, displays high courage, and puts his life in jeopardy. Nevertheless, though cruel enough, it has not that character of meanness, of low cowardliness that distinguished the Warwick lion-fight; the bulls were wild and ferocious, and at liberty in all their motions; they viewed man as their foe. The utter uselessness of such a conflict must also not be overlooked. A day or two after, the owner of this lion, named Wombwell, produced another lion combat. It was of a different character from the first; the animal, from being more untameable, exhibited the dogs but as so many mice in the jaws of a cat, walking round the arena with them one after another, and then dropping them. It may be easily guessed I did not go to witness this second battle; but the reader will blush to be informed that many ladies did-wives and daughters, it is to be presumed, of the Warwick patrons of these disgraceful scenes; "The Warwickshire lasses" must no longer be a toast without a saving reservation.

But what are the grounds upon which the abettors of these cruel exhibitions justify them? and how, if they are able to think at all, can they reconcile these practices with the existing state of society? In dark ages, when man reposed in ignorance and incivilization, when he slept upon his earthen floor, and a few dried rushes formed the carpet of the nobles of the land; when the inventions and comforts of recent times were unknown, and hardship of life seemed to impart a corresponding coarseness to the feelings, such amusements were common, and agreed well with unrefined habits and mental darkness. With those times they should have passed away, and would perhaps have done so, but for the spirit of gambling which reigns too widely at present. If, however, this propensity must be gratified, let those who bet, stake their cash upon some more humane hazard. If we have the power, we can have no right to put animals to torture-to curse this beautiful world with additional pain and misery for our amusement. They who do thus, are among the worst citizens, and the worst men in the community. The inferior devotees to and panders in such pleasures are generally among the outscouring of society, vagabonds, thieves, and profligates, with whom spendthrift peers, fox-hunting squires, and prize-ring amateurs mingle; disgracing their rank in society, and hardening themselves against the nobler and kinder feelings of the heart. Is there not suffering enough in this world-has it not enough of pain and sorrow, but the stock must be increased out of a prodigal wantonness? Are we to witness black hearts revelling in the disfigurement and destruction of what is fair and beautiful? Is it right to transmit to posterity, without their virtues, the cruelties and excesses of our forefathers, who might plead that ignorance, which we cannot urge in justification? But a want of feeling for the brute creation is a sign of a wicked disposition, as it for the most part argues a want of intellectual power.

With a