Its End Has Invariably Been Brought About By
Legislation Through The Devotion Of Men Who Were The "Cranks,"
The "Faddists,
" The "sentimentalists," of their day, who were
jeered and laughed at by their fellows, and who only succeeded
by sheer
Tenacity and force of character after long fighting
against public opinion and a reluctant Parliament, in finally
getting their law.
Bloomfield's was but a small voice crying in the wilderness,
and he was indeed a small singer in the day of our greatest
singers. As a poet he was not worthy to unloose the buckles
of their shoes; but he had one thing in common with the best
and greatest, the feeling of tender love and compassion for
the lower animals which was in Thomson and Cowper, but found
its highest expression in his own great contemporaries,
Coleridge, Shelley, and Wordsworth. In virtue of this feeling
he was of their illustrious brotherhood.
In conclusion, I will quote one more passage. From the
subject of horses he passes to that of dogs and their
occasional reversion to wildness, when the mastiff or cur, the
"faithful" house-dog by day, takes to sheep-killing by night.
As a rule he is exceedingly cunning, committing his
depredations at a distance frown home, and after getting his
fill of slaughter he sneaks home in the early hours to spend
the day in his kennel "licking his guilty paws." This is an
anxious time for shepherds and farmers, and poor Giles is
compelled to pay late evening visits to his small flock of
heavy-sided ewes penned in their distant fold.
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