scanty fare. The sweets of unbounded liberty are counterbalanced by the unremitting labour which is necessary to procure him a precarious subsistence. In those salt and dreary wastes, which providence has allotted for his residence, very few plants are to be found, and those, from the heat of the climate, and the nature of the soil, are stinted in their growth, and bitter to the taste: "They see not when good cometh;" for they grow in the parched places in the wilderness, “in a salt land, and not inhabited." In such inhospitable regions, the wild ass is compelled to traverse a great extent of country, to scour the plains, and range over the mountains, in order to find here and there a few blades of coarse, withered grass, and browse the tops of the few stunted shrubs which languish in those sandy wilds. Such are the allusions involved in these words: "The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing."

It must not be supposed that a condition, apparently so hard, involves this animal in greater difficulties than many other wild beasts experience. The Creator has, with admirable wisdom and goodness, adapted his constitution and instincts to his situation and manner of life. His temperance corresponds with the barrenness of the soil, and his taste with the peculiar qualities of the plants which it produces In consequence of this wise and gracious arrangement, a tuft of sickly grass, and a little brackish water, satisfy his moderate demands; and of these, we know from the testimony of Job, he commonly finds enough, even in the parched and sterile deserts of Arabia; "The wilderness yieldeth food for them, and for their children." But, when these fail on the plains,

* Jer. xvii, 6.

he retires to the mountains, where, under a more tempe rate sky, the herb still flourishes, and the water streams. This apparently trifling circumstance, the Psalmist deemed not unworthy of his notice, nor of being celebrated in the songs of Zion: "He sendeth the springs into the valleys which run among the hills: They give drink to every beast of the field, the wild asses quench their thirst." But, even these resources occasionally fail; the mountain herb is burnt up, and the springs are exhausted; then, in spite of his habitual temperance, he is reduced in common with other animals, to a state of severe suffering. At such times he takes his station on the top of a rock, to cool in the passing breeze, the fever which rages in his veins, and sucks in the air for want of water. To such a state of wretchedness was he reduced by the dearth which Jeremiah so feelingly describes: "The wild asses did stand in the high places; they snuffed up the wind like dragons; their eyes did fail because there was no grass." They seek relief on the summits of the highest mountains from the overwhelming heat: they snuff up the wind like dragons, which stand daily for some hours with the head erect, and the mouth wide open towards the sky, sucking in the air; their eyes, which are extremely fine and sharp sighted, for want of nourishment, lose their brilliancy and power of vision. Such painful sufferings, we learn from Virgil, are sometimes experienced in the more temperate climate of Italy:

i

"Aut bucula cælum

Suspiciens, patulis captavit naribus auras." 1 Geor. 1. 375.

Under the pressure of extreme want, like man and other animals, the wild ass becomes faint, his eyes fail,

h Ps. civ, 10, 11.

i Jer. xiv, 6.

and he pines in silent dispair; but in less trying circumstances, he expresses his uneasy feelings by frequently braying. From this harsh disagreeable sound, peculiar to the ass, he has obtained from his Maker, in a passage of Scripture already quoted, the appropriate name of the brayer: "Who hath sent out the wild ass free? or, who hath loosed the bands of the brayer" (17). The same instinct which excites the onager to complain in a low grumbling noise when he meets with any molestation, and in louder tones when hungry, and in want of pasture, caused the afflicted patriarch to mourn in the days of his adversity, and complain under his agonizing sufferings and cruel bereavements. His miserable comforters reproached him with indulging in loud and frequent complaints; and in reply, the patient sufferer puts the significant question: "Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass? Or loweth the ox over his fodder ?" No: they are then contented and silent; and so was he in a state of prosperity. Then his tongue uttered no complaint; he was a stranger to a fretful and unquiet spirit. But, now that he was deprived of all his earthly comforts, agonized with pain, and oppressed with grief, it was as natural for him to complain as for the wild ass to bray, and the ox to low, when they can find no grass to allay the cravings of hunger.

To live with the wild ass in the desert, and to encounter the various hardships inseparable from his condition, has been justly reckoned by the orientals the lowest degree of wretchedness to which the poor and needy can be reduced; and to be insulted by such mean and contemptible persons, the last disgrace which fallen greatness is doomed to suffer. It accordingly added much to the

poignancy of Job's afflictions, that he had become the derision of these dregs of society, whose fathers he would have disdained to set with the dogs of his flock; whose families were unfit for any useful purpose, and had been from one generation to another a public nuisance. His description of their hereditary indigence and wretchedness, is extremely animated and striking. It is thus translated by Dr. Peddie, in his excellent essay on this article: "In want and severe hunger, they gnawed the desert; a place forsaken, desolate, and waste. They cropped the tops of the salt tasted herb upon the bush; and the root of the genista was their meat. From the society of men they were expelled, who chased them with shouting as they do a thief, to dwell in the precipices of the torrents, holes of the earth, and caverns of the rocks. Among the bushes they brayed under the briars they were gathered together."

jיי

:

Every natural historian has recorded the extreme wildness of this animal. He is so jealous of his liberty, that on the slightest alarm, or the first appearance of danger, he flies with amazing swiftness into the desert. His senses are so acute, that it is impossible to approach him in the open country. But, in spite of all his vigilance, the hunter often encloses him in his toils, and leads him away into captivity. Even in this unhappy state, he never submits his neck to the yoke of man without a determined resistance. "Sent out free" by him that made him, he is tenacious of his independence, and opposes, to the extraordinary methods which his captors are forced to employ, the most savage obstinacy; and for the most part, he baffles all their endeavours to tame him; still he

j Job xxx, 3-7.

k

"scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regards he the crying of the driver." On the authority of this text, Chrysotom says, "this animal is strong and untameable; man can never subdue him, whatever efforts he may make for that purpose." But Varro affirms, on the contrary, that "the wild ass is fit for labour; that he is easily tamed; and that when he is once tamed, he never resumes his original wildness." The words of Jehovah certainly give no countenance to the opinion of the Greek father; they only intimate, that it is extremely difficult to subdue the high spirit, and stubborn temper of this animal; for the apostle James declares, that "every kind of beast is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind;"m and great numbers of them are actually broken to the yoke in Persia, and some other countries. But, it appears from the statement of Professor Gmelin, that the Persians tame the young onagers ;" and the reason probably is, that they seldom or never succeed in rendering a full grown onager serviceable to man.

Not more untameable and indocile is the wild ass, in the mind of Zophar, than the human kind in their present degenerate state: "Vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass's colt." Empty, self-conceited man, still aspires to equal God in wisdom and knowledge; still fondly supposes himself qualified to sit in judgment on the divine proceedings, and to take the exclusive management of his own affairs, although the wild ass's colt is not more rude, indocile, and untractable.

k Chrysostom in Catena.

1 De Re Rust. lib. ii, cap. 6. See also Plin. Natur. Hist. lib. viii,