proved as yet; namely, that each of our globules is ar animated being; and that our life is the mysterious result of these millions of lesser lives, each of them in significant in itself; in the same way that the mighty existence of a nation, is a compound of crowds of exist ences, each, for the most part, without individual importance. Take our own or any other country as an instance; where millions of brains, many of them by no means first-rate in power, go to form a national character, the highest (as each nation is apt to think of itself) in the world. According to this idea, you must be a sort of nation yourself, my dear child, which is gratifying to think of on the whole.

This is much more extraordinary than what I told you some time ago, of the individual life of the organs, each of which on this new system would be a province in itself! Do not exclaim too hastily. Whether the globules are animated or not, it is very certain, let me tell you, that your life depends entirely upon them; that it is weakened if they are weakened; that it revives with them; and that whether you attribute individual life to them or not, makes no alteration in the fact their action upon you remains the same. And he must be a very clever man who can show me the exact difference between action and life. Hereafter, when we have descended the scale of the animal world together, and are arrived at the study of what are called microscopic animals, you will better understand the words which appear so strange to you now. What little our feeble instruments have revealed to us so far, of the history of those globules, places them almost on a level with those strange creatures, inexplicable to us, which are found in innumerable multitudes, in a variety of liquids. We trace in them the beginning of organi

zation; their form and size are alike in all individuals of the same species; and species vary enough to induce one to believe, that there is a necessary relation between an animal's way of life and that of its globules. If the microscope has not yet caught them in any overt living act, who can be surprised? it is only dead blood which has been submitted to the test. They ought to be observed in the exercise of their functions, in the living animal itself, as has been done to some extent in the frog; and if our foolish chat could influence scientific observers, I would say to them what M. Leverrier said years ago to the astonished astronomers: "Look yonder; you ought to see a light there with which you are not yet acquainted!"

I am carrying you a long way on the wings of my fancy, my dear child; but have no fears; I will not let you fall. This life of our globules, which would, after all, be only one mystery the more among many, opens before our eyes a magnificent vista of the uniformity in the scheme of creation; which goes on repeating itself, while enlarging its circles to infinity. We may, all of us, be only so many globules of the great invisible fabric of humanity, in which we go up and down one after another; and those vast globes which our telescopes follow through celestial space, may be but globules of one, as yet unknown, to which the Almighty alone can give

a name.

Take this page to your father, my dear child, if you do not understand it rightly; and now, shake hands, my history is ended!

PART SECOND-ANIMALS.

LETTER XXIX.

CLASSIFICATION OF ANIMALS.

'Ir is dangerous to show man how much he resembles the beasts, without at the same time pointing out to him his own greatness. It is also dangerous to show him his greatness, without pointing out his baseness. It is more dangerous still to leave him in ignorance of both. But it is greatly for his advantage to have both set before him.'-Pensées de Pascal.

The man who wrote that, my dear child, did not trouble himself much about children. He was one of the gravest specimens of literary genius-a man who can scarcely be said to have ever been a child himself; for as the story goes, he was found one day, when only twelve years old, inventing geometry, and his father only saved him from trouble, by putting the great book of Euclid into his hands; and, at sixteen, he wrote a treatise on Conic Sections, which was the wonder of all the learned men of the day. I have not a very clear idea of what Conic Sections are myself; but I tell you this to show that Pascal was a very profound and learned man, under whose authority, therefore, I am very glad to take shelter, now that I am going to set before you the very startling points of resemblance which exist between you and the beasts.

As to your greatness, it delights me to explain it to you. It is not due to the handsome clothes you wear

when you are going out, nor to the luxurious furniture of mamma's drawing-room, but to the possession of that young soul which is beginning to dawn within you, as the sun rises in the morning sky, and pierces through the early mists; in that growing intelligence which has ena bled you to understand so far all the pretty stories 1 have told you; in that fresh unsullied conscience, which congratulates you when you have been good, and reproves you when you have done wrong: all of them gifts which are not bestowed on the lower animals, or certainly not to the same extent as upon you-gifts by which you rise more and more above them, the more they are developed in yourself. Your baseness-but, begging Pascal's pardon, I cannot call it baseness--your connecting link with the brute creation lies in those other gifts of God which you and they share in common-in those wonders of your organization, which we shall now meet with in them again, in full perfection at first, and that in every respect; by which fact you may learn, if you never thought of it before, that the lower animals come from the same creat ing hand as yourself, and ought to be looked upon to some extent as younger brothers, however distasteful such a notion may seem at first.

Societies have been established of late, both in France and England, for the protection of animals; and a noble and honorable task they have undertaken, in spite of the jokes that have been made at their expense. It is a mischievous cavil to tell people who are doing good in one direction, that more might have been done somewhere else. Everything hangs together in the progress of public morality, and you cannot strike a blow at cruelty to animals without at the same time making a hit at cruelty to man. And the best argument in favor of the rights of beasts to protection, will be found in the tour