what a task it is to walk them, till practice has made it easy. Weir is one that affords as steady footing as any;, but to stand on that narrow beam for the first time, whilst the ear is stunned by the roar of the fall, and the eye reels as it is dazzled with the raging white water of the boiling pool, fifteen feet below, demands good nerves. To fish in such a position requires strong ones. My bait was, at one time, spinning far down in the pool thirty yards off-and at another, as I shortened my line, which then lay at my feet on the beam or hung down from it, and reversed my rod, it was glittering close beneath me in the foam on the apron. Suddenly I lost sight of it, and, at the same instant, there was a snatch that I felt to my spinal chord. I had him! I raised my rod in the twinkling of an eye, gave him the butt, and up he sprang in the broad sun-light, showing a side like a sow. "Don't check him!" cried the fisherman, in a voice, that was heard above the river-thunder. Out ran the line! Who can be collected at such a moment? It coiled round my ancle, and down I went headlong into the mad water below. Strange as it may appear, my principal anxiety, as I struck out into the pool to avoid being sucked back under the apron, was to secure the fish, which I felt was still fast. This embarrassed me, and, notwithstanding my efforts, I was drawn back into the weltering waves under the weir.. I looked round, and there I beheld that dreadful face glaring ghastly at me through the smooth glassy sheet of the falling water; and I felt the long deadly arms dragging me, feet foremost, under the apron. In the delirium of despair I cried out,-" You said I should land the fish." "I said," shouted the horror, "that the fish should be landed, and that I would see you in the churchyard;" and he mercilessly pulled me under. "Lord! Lord! methought what pain it was to drown." The long, cruel arms kept dragging me deeper and deeper. The brightness became less and less. My agony was inexpressible. Then came darkness,-the blackness of darkness. Suddenly my sensations were even pleasant, and I fancied that I was in a delicious meadow. A fearful change succeeded. I found myself in a well-known burial vault, "Girt by parent, brother, friend, Long since number'd with the dead." And there was that grim feature still claiming me, and the long lean arms were stretched out to grapple me, and the grasp entered into my soul. I turned to make one desperate effort at escape, and, opening my eyes, I found myself still stretched on the dry boards. My companion was shaking me by the shoulder, and inquiring, with something like reproach, if I thought that was the way to get the great fish into the well? PART SECOND.-QUADRUPEDS, ETC. DOGS. "The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart." LEAR. YES, dogs are honest creatures and the most delightful of fourfooted beings. The brain and nervous system may be more highly developed in the Anthropoïd apes, and even in some of the monkeys; but for affectionate, though humble companionship, nay friendship; for the amiable spirit that is on the watch to anticipate every wish of his master-for the most devoted attachment to him, in prosperity and adversity, in health and sickness, an attachment always continued unto death, and frequently failing not even when the once warm hand that patted him is clay-cold; what we had almost said who-can equal these charming familiars? Your dog will, to please you, do that which is positively painful to him. Hungry though he be, he will leave his food for you; he will quit the strongest temptation for you; he will lay down his life for you. Truly spake he who said, "Man is the God of the dog." Of all the conquests over the brute creation that man has made, the domestication of the dog may be regarded as the most complete, if not the most useful: it is the only animal that has followed him all over the earth. And to see how these noble animals are treated by savages civilized as well as uncivilized; kicked, spurned, harnessed to heavy carriages, half-starved, cudgelled, they still follow the greater brute that lords it over them, and if he condescends to smile upon them how they bound in gladness! if he, by some inexplicable obliquity of good feeling, in a moment of forgetfulness caresses them, they are beside themselves with joy. As a whole their lot seems to be the worst, if it is cast among savage or imperfectly-civilized nations. When Lawson was among the North-American Indians, he was present at a great feast where was "store of loblolly and other medleys, made of Indian grain, stewed peaches, bear venison, &c. ;" when all the viands were brought in "the first figure began with kicking out all the dogs, which are seemingly wolves made tame with starving and beating; they being the worst dog masters in the world; so that it is an infallible cure for sore eyes ever to see an Indian's dog fat." The tribe who exercised this summary calcitration on the poor dogs, that had most probably contributed not a little to the venison part of the entertainment, rejoiced in the appropriate name of the Whacksaws or Waxsaws; and yet these same Indians delighted in feeding up their horses till they were comparable to nothing more aptly than an English prize-ox. Though much advanced in the scale of civilization, the Javanese, according to Dr. Horsfield, seem to be little better dog-masters than the Waxsaws; for he remarks that the poor brutes, we mean the dogs, are not cared for, and are ill-treated, so that their famishing condition is disgusting to Europeans. This is the more extraordinary` as many of these dogs pursue the Java deer called the Kidang with great ardour and courage. They are led in slips and loosed when they come upon the scent. Away they go, and the hunters, who follow more quietly, generally find the deer at bay and the hounds going gallantly into him. This is no joke, for the male Kidang makes a capital fight with his tusks, wounding his assailants severely, often fatally. "The sportsmen," says the Doctor, whose book is full of interesting passages, "uniformly are provided with remedies and applications, and by a simple suture attempt to unite those wounds which are not immediately fatal. In this operation they frequently succeed and préserve their most valuable dogs." But even this small care appears to be the exception to the rule. "The natives of Java, like other Mahommedans, entertain prejudices unfavourable to dogs; they rarely treat them with kindness, or allow them to approach their persons; and it is only in extraordinary instances, or when they contribute to their amusement, that they feed or care for them.' To be sure, as a set-off, they rarely show attachment to their masters, and no wonder; even Bill Sykes's dog could not carry his otherwise unqualified obedience to the length of getting over his very particular objection to being drowned. On the other hand, the good dog-master considers his fourfooted follower as his friend, his other self, his doppelgänger, so that "Love me, love my dog," has passed into a proverb which has sometimes led to deadly results; we need only allude to the fatal duel between Colonel Montgomery and Captain Macnamara. Nor can it be wondered at that a man should feel strongly for the faithful animal that distinguishes him from all others, an animal that may be a burr but is hardly ever a bore. Now and then, indeed, an ill-bred cur will, like Launce's Crab, thrust himself into the company of three or four gentlemanlike dogs; but your Biped Bore constantly and unrelentingly intrudes into a happy knot of mortals, not of his quality, who are shaking off the cares of life with a little joyous converse, till he has succeeded in reducing the gaiety that was flashing so brilliantly to a heap of ashes, and the merry tongues to a dead silence. Or he finds out when you are sick, and by an incomprehensible power possessed only by the typical Bore or Augur—not soothsayer—drills himself through all the doors barricaded against him, and, having perforated to your sanctum, preys upon you in your own arm-chair, giving you all the while, under colour of much pity, broad hints that you are booked," and wimbling deeper and deeper still, till he has shattered the remains of your nerves to atoms; when, having absolutely devoured you in your shell, he leaves you, a complete caput mortuum, tó go and finish with some other victim -the cannibal! Why, why, is there not in our great clubs a power of reprobation as well as of election? Surely it would not be too much for twelve hundred men to have the power of excluding eight annually a power, by the way, which would be seldom exerted, for the very knowledge of its existence would have its effect, though it might be necessary now and then to eject some incorrigible pachydermatous bore pour encourager les autres. There is already a law prohibiting the entrance of our friends the dogs into those masculine establishments, a law which one is, at first, disposed to regard as harsh; but the reflection that most of the members of a club show no backwardness in availing themselves of its privileges, reconciles the mind to the inhospitable practice of making the worthy beasts sit in the porch, anxiously watching for the egress of their masters. Think of the assemblage of the doggies belonging to a thousand or twelve hundred masters, and the duels the principals, to be sure, nowadays, never hit each other-which would spring out of the collision. Besides, they are not admitted at court, according to the old French quatrain•for which of their qualities we may not guess: "A la court les gros courtisans Les petits qui sont moins puissants But if they are not allowed to grace our assemblies within doors, there is no lack of them when men are gathered together under |