that open a new intercourse with the most despised of the animal and insect race.  I think this vein may be further opened; Peter Pindar hath very prettily apostrophized a fly; Burns hath his mouse and his louse; Coleridge, less successfully, hath made overtures of intimacy to a jackass,—­therein only following at unresembling distance Sterne and greater Cervantes.  Besides these, I know of no other examples of breaking down the partition between us and our “poor earth-born companions.”  It is sometimes revolting to be put in a track of feeling by other people, not one’s own immediate thoughts, else I would persuade you, if I could (I am in earnest), to commence a series of these animal poems, which might have a tendency to rescue some poor creatures from the antipathy of mankind.  Some thoughts come across me:  for instance, to a rat, to a toad, to a cockchafer, to a mole,—­people bake moles alive by a slow oven-fire to cure consumption.  Rats are, indeed, the most despised and contemptible parts of God’s earth, I killed a rat the other day by punching him to pieces, and feel a weight of blood upon me to this hour.  Toads, you know, are made to fly, and tumble down and crush all to pieces.  Cockchafers are old sport; then again to a worm, with an apostrophe to anglers,—­those patient tyrants, meek inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils; [1] to an owl; to all snakes, with an apology for their poison; to a cat in boots or bladders.  Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy to these hints, will suggest many more.  A series of such poems, suppose them accompanied with plates descriptive of animal torments,—­cooks roasting lobsters, fishmongers crimping skates, etc.,—­would take excessively, I will willingly enter into a partnership in the plan with you; I think my heart and soul would go with it too,—­at least, give it a thought.  My plan is but this minute come into my head; but it strikes me instantaneously as something new, good, and useful, full of pleasure and full of moral.  If old Quarles and Wither could live again, we would invite them into our firm.  Burns hath done his part.

Poor Sam Le Grice!  I am afraid the world and the camp and the university have spoiled him among them.  ’Tis certain he had at one time a strong capacity of turning out something better.  I knew him, and that not long since, when he had a most warm heart.  I am ashamed of the indifference I have sometimes felt towards him.  I think the devil is in one’s heart.  I am under obligations to that man for the warmest friendship and heartiest sympathy, [2] even for an agony of sympathy expressed both by word and deed, and tears for me when I was in my greatest distress.  But I have forgot that,—­as, I fear, he has nigh forgot the awful scenes which were before his eyes when he served the office of a comforter to me.  No service was too mean or troublesome for him to perform.  I can’t think what but the devil, “that old spider,” could have suck’d my heart so dry of its sense of