either side bearing testimony that his sober-minded flock hungered not for the excitement of fanaticism, he entered the readingdesk, and as he was adjusting his hassock, caught the eye of Toby twinkling at him out of the darkest corner. Need we say more, than that after this, Toby was permitted to go to church, with the unanimous approbation of the parish, as long as he lived. Now if this was not calculation on the part of Toby, we know not what else to term it, and we could refer our readers to well-authenticated stories in print-as our dear old nurse used to say when she was determined to silence all incredulity—that go as far, and even farther, to show that these animals can calculate intervals of time.

It is this intellectuality, joined with their individuality-for no two dogs are alike-that makes them such admirable subjects for the gifted hand of Edwin Landseer. It is said that dogs have been taught to utter, after a fashion, one or two simple words, not exceeding two syllables; however this may be, no one, we apprehend, who has seen The Twa Dogs can doubt that they converse. When we "look around the walls," as the patronizing orators say at the annual festival in Trafalgar-square, and catch the Promethean fire infused into the portrait of A Respectable Member of the Humane Society and others, his fellows, we suspect that a few of the gentlemen-ay, and ladies too-who have paid for having their faces mapped and hung on those same "walls," sigh occasionally as their eyes rest on the beautifully characterized doggies, and feel an irresistible preference for the Cynic school. The Mahommedans were forbidden to represent either man or other animals; and the prohibition, if we mistake not, arose frem a tradition that those who are hardy enough to make the attempt will be called upon hereafter, to put a soul into every one of their representations—or else: if there be any foundation for this creed, what an awful future awaits some of our exhibiters.

Another consequence of the intellect manifest in our friends, the dogs, and the almost human affections that belong to them, is, that superstition has conferred upon them a sort of immortality. To say nothing of "Cerberus," of the poor Indian's "equal sky,' or the " Tomalins," and other black-dog familiars of the ages of witchcraft, we have the Mauthe Doog of the Manksman, the Fiend Hund of Faust, and the Hell-hound of Britain. As the dog was supposed to be gifted with the power of seeing spirits when they were invisible to man, it is no wonder that we have spectrehounds, or that our ghostly enemy himself should have been supposed in those dark and disgraceful times to which we have alluded, to have condescended to put on the shape of the most sagacious of four-footed beings, one that the ancient Egyptians worshipped as a god.

The variety of form and colour in the races of dogs is infinite. Contrast the mastiff with the spaniel-place the St. Bernard dog -the great Thibet watch-dog-that of Spain, or the gallant Scotch deerhound, by the side of our rector's Toby, or one of that curious family of French-not Dutch-pugs, and it seems almost incredible that they should be all of one species. Yet the most acute observers have failed, and, in our opinion, always will fail, to seize on any character which shall be found to warrant specific distinction.

We have heard the tiny French dogs, above mentioned, libelled as being useless; but they have very winning ways, and gain upon you, till they almost become little friends. The great luxury of their life seems to consist in being nursed in the lap,that of a lady for choice, and for this they will sit up, and beg as pertinaciously as other dogs will for food. The hound has been sung in every language since Cadmus taught his dragonlads the alphabet. The bloodhound, and the greyhound, have been immortalized by our best poets, ancient and modern; a Newfoundland dog was the friend of Byron, and Scott had his Maida. There is hardly a great dog, from that of Ulysses downwards, that has not had his eulogist; but these little dogs are a despised generation, and though they may suffer by our pen, we venture a word or two, by way of introducing them to our readers, the more especially as none of them appear to have sat to Edwin. If they had, we would gladly have left their character in his hands. Very fine neat limbs, very high foreheads, prominent, expressive eyes, long ears, which they erect, so as to look a little like Fennecs, a tight-curled tail, and a very close, fine coat, are their characteristics: the true bred and handsome ones show a great deal of blood. They are most intelligent and affectionate, and understand in a very short time whether the conversation relates to them, though not addressed to them, nor carried on in an altered tone-as indeed is the case with most sensible dogs.

It was amusing to see three of these little dogs in company with Rundy, a beautiful beagle, especially when a splendid fellow of a French pointer was occasionally admitted into the party. The well-educated pointer, who could do every thing but talk as they say, was ordered into a chair, where he sat with a most becoming gravity, and there, wrapped in a cloak, and with his foraging cap jauntingly cocked over one eye, and a roll of paper in his mouth for a cigar, he looked much more manly than the wheyfaced bipeds who pollute our streets and add their mouthful of foul smoke to "the fog and filthy air" of this reeking town. When the little lapless dogs on the carpet saw this, they would surround his chair, sitting up in the usual begging position, and hoping, apparently, that among his other accomplishments, he

had learned the all-soothing art of nursing. Rundy generally took this opportunity of securing the best place on the rug, where he lay stretched out on his side before the fire. The suppliants finding that the Frenchman in the chair made no sign, and that they could produce no impression on the flinty hearts of the rest of the company, to each of whom, in succession, they had sat up, adjourned one after the other, and after sitting up for a moment to the recumbent Rundy, sat down upon him, looking, as a friend once said, like a coroner's jury sitting on the body; and indeed, Rundy, who was good-tempered and used to the operation, lay as still as if he had been no longer of this world. They seemed to have the greatest objection to resting on the floor, richly Turkey-carpeted though it was. When they were thus seated looking at the fire, with their backs to the company, the words, "Well, you may come," uttered without any particular emphasis, would bring them all in a moment bounding into the laps of the speakers. At night they were always on the look out for a friend who would take them to bed, otherwise the mat was their portion. At the well-known "au lit, au lit," they would rush from the snuggest of laps, and gambol before you to your bedroom. As soon as they entered it and were told, "you may go into bed," they would creep in between the sheets at the top, and work their way down to the bottom, where they would lie all night at your feet, without moving, unless a particularly favoured Lilliputian was permitted to come up and lay its head on the pillow or your arm.

That these faithful creatures should be subject to the most frightful and fatal of diseases—a disease which they too frequently communicate in their madness to their beloved master or mistress, is one of those inscrutable dispensations that sets all our philosophy at nought.

The chamber of a human being, writhing under hydrophobia, is a scene never to be forgotten by those who have had the misfortune to witness it. There lies the wretched victim under a certain sentence of death-death the most dreadful! His unsteady glistening eye wanders over the anxious faces that surround him; the presence of any liquid-the noise of pouring it out-a polished surface-or any thing that suggests the idea of it-even the sudden admission of a cold current of air, bring on the most agonizing paroxysms of spasm in the throat. Oh! to see him strong in resolution, determined to make the rebel muscles obedient-to see and hear him

"Struggle with the rising fits,"

and sit up and say that he will take his medicine. And there he is, apparently calm-the attendant approaches with the cup-he

receives it—you almost think, so much does he seem to have his nerves under command, that he will drain it. He lifts it to his parched lips, his haggard eye rolls, the rising spasms overpower him-"I can't," he faintly utters, and falls back in agony. We dare not go on it is too horrible!

But we may point out, especially as there is a good deal of misunderstanding upon the subject, the usual symptoms that denote the rabid dog; for it frequently happens that a dog is destroyed as mad, when he has no disease of the kind about him; whilst, on the other hand, the rabid animal is often suffered to live and deal destruction around. It is an error to suppose that a mad dog always shows aversion to water, as the name of the disease implies; he will, on the contrary, sometimes lap it-nay, swim across a river without manifesting any of the horror that marks the disease in man. The most sure symptom is a complete alteration of temper, from the mild and the familiar to the sullen and the snarling; he snaps at all objects, animate and inanimate, and gnaws them. Even in this state his behaviour often continues unaltered to his master or mistress; and hence the cases which have arisen from having been licked by the tongue of such a dog, on some part of the face or hands where the skin had been broken. Though he goes wildly about, apparently without an object, foaming at the mouth generally, and snapping as he proceeds, he rarely gallops, but mostly keeps to a sullen trot with his tail down. The best representation of this mad gait that we have seen, is in " Bewick's Quadrupeds," where the vignette at p. 330, of the edition of 1820, gives a very correct idea of the rabid animal in its progress.

What produces this cruel disease in the dog, is a mystery: it can hardly be hardship or ill-treatment, for it frequently happens to pets

"Bred with all the care

That waits upon a fav'rite heir.”

Just see what Sonnini says of the dogs at Rosetta, where, though "repelled by man, to whose personal use nature seems to have destined them, they are, nevertheless, incapable of deserting him." In modern Egypt the dog is considered an unclean beast, not to be touched without subsequent purification, and, therefore, carefully shunned by the Mahommedans. "There are few cities in the world," writes Sonnini," which contain so many dogs as those of Egypt; or at least, there is no one which has the appearance of containing more, because they are there constantly assembled in the streets, their only habitation. There they have no other supplies of food but what they can pick up at the doors of houses, or scramble for by raking into filth and garbage. The females drop their young at the corner of some retired and unfre

quented street; for a disciple of Mahomet would not permit them to approach his habitation. Continually exposed to the cruel treatment of the populace; massacred sometimes without mercy by an armed mob: subjected to all the inclemency of the elements; hardly finding the means of supporting a wretched existence; meager; irritated to madness; frequently eaten up by a mange which degenerates into a species of leprosy; hideous even from the forlornness of their condition; those miserable animals inspire as much compassion, as they excite contempt and indignation against the barbarians among whom they live. It is undoubtedly astonishing that amidst a life of misery and suffering, many of those dogs should not be subject to attacks of the hydrophobia. But this malady, rare in the northern parts of Turkey, is still more so in the southern provinces of that empire, and is totally unknown under the burning sky of Egypt. Inever saw a single instance of and the natives whom I consulted on the subject, had not so much as an idea of the disease."

We willingly drop this distressing part of our subject; but we must not conceal that though hydrophobia generally makes its appearance in man between the thirtieth and fortieth days after the communication of the virus, fatal cases that have occurred after a lapse of eighteen months are on record; and there is not wanting high authority for the assertion that a person cannot be considered perfectly safe till two years at least have passed, reckoning from the time when the injury was received.

CATS.

"I come, Graymalkin!'

MACBETH.

IF dogs are the friends of mankind, their companions in their walks, and their partners in the pleasures of the chase, cats may be considered as the chosen allies of womanhood. Not that the sterner sex have not shown as much fondness for these luxurious quadrupeds as the ladies have exhibited, ay, even those who cradle the blind offspring of their Selimas, and adorn the pensive mother's neck with coral beads. Mahomet, Montaigne, Richelieu, and Johnson, were not exactly simpletons, though it might be difficult to make a modern dandy understand the kindness of heart that sent the lexicographer out to purchase oysters for his