for the prevention of cruelty to costermongers' donkeys, while themselves delighting in the cruel and unmanly massacre of tame pigeons and semi-domesticated pheasants, was thoroughly exposed in the course of the controversy, and a well-aimed blow struck at the heart of the abomination of the game-laws, which have so long disgraced the statute-book of the country.
"Strange that of all the living chain
That binds creation's plan,
There is but one delights in pain,—
The savage monarch man!"
It is hardly necessary to say, that, with perhaps the single exception of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Freeman is the greatest living master of the Eastern question in all its details. He was four years of age when the battle of Navarino was fought, and he remembers the receipt of the intelligence. He may be said to have been interested in the emancipation of the Eastern Christians ever since. At the time of the Crimean war his pen was incessantly employed in combating the national madness. The number of persons in this country who then understood the real issues in the East was insignificant, and Freeman was one of the few. He may be said to have advocated the "bag and baggage" policy from the beginning; and he never lost sight of his object. When the city fell down and worshipped the Sultan on the occasion of his visit to London, Mr. Freeman almost alone entered a spirited protest against the base idolatry, and described the Oriental tyrant in befitting terms. When the Herzegovinian insurrection broke out he was one of the first who strove to range his countrymen on the side of the oppressed. By
