| CHAPTERS ON
Pe ANIMALS

PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
EDITED BY PROF, W. P. TRENT

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THE CONNOISSEURS.

Pen Drawing by E. H. Saunders, after Sir Edwin Landseer,

CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS

DOGS CATS AND HORSES

BY

PHILIP G. HAMERTON
fh

INTRODUCTION BY

W. P. TRENT

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
, sg? ;
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ILLUSTRATED WITH PEN DRAWINGS BY E. H. SAUNDERS AND
D. L. MUNRO, AFTER SIR E. LANDSEER, SIR ¥OHN MILLAIS,
ROSA BONHEUR, E. VAN MUYDEN, VEYRASSAT,
¥. L. GEROME, K. BODMER, ETC.

BOSTON, U.S.A.
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS

IQOI

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4

COPYRIGHT, 1900
By D. C. HeaTH & Co,

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PREFACE.

Puitip GILBERT HAMERTON, an art critic of keen insight
and wide reputation, whose writings are remarkable for
their attractive style, was born in 1834 and died in 1894.
The greater portion of his life was spent in France; the
rest of it chiefly in one of the wildest and most beautiful
parts of Scotland, where he lived as much as possible
among his friends, the animals. His wife says that “he
never could be without a dog,” and the following words,
in which he prefaces the book (“Chapters on Animals,”
London, 1874) from which these pages are taken, together
with the chapters themselves, will show what a warm
lover and kind-hearted master animals had in him.

“Having been in the habit of loving and observing
animals, as people do who live much in the country, I
thought that possibly some of my observations, however
trifling in themselves, might interest others whose tastes
are similar to my own. In this spirit I wrote these chap-
ters, describing what I had seen rather than what other
writers had recorded.”

The pages here given cannot fail to interest readers of
every age. They should, moreover, be in a high degree
educative to children, and it is with this object in view that
the selection has been made.

v

vi Preface.

Such annotations have been provided under my super-
vision as are necessary to explain the foreign phrases and
some of the allusions, unfamiliarity with which might
prove detrimental to the young reader’s enjoyment and
appreciation of these charming studies.

W. P. TRENT.

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH,
May, Igoo.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE
I. Docs : * : 5 ‘i is ‘ - E I
Il. Does (continued). ‘ ‘ : r - 3 13
III. CANINE GUESTS : r 7 a P - ‘ Me 24

IV. Cats. F : , . : . : . - 39

V. HORSES. 2 : a . ‘ . . i a BF

vii

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Tue ConnorssEurs. After Sir E. Landseer .

HEAD OF A Fox TERRIER

THE Kennex. After A. G. Decamps
Pointers, After Karl-Bodmer a ‘ ‘
THE FAITHFUL WATCH-pboc. After Karl Bodmer
GreyHounpD. After J. L. Gérdme

ENGLISH SETTERS. By D. L. Munro

POINTER AND GREYHOUND

THE ORDER OF RELEASE. After Sir John Millais

THE SHEPHERD’S CHIEF Mourner. After Sir E, Landseer
CHIEN-MOUTON

CHIEN-CANICHE ‘

A FAscINATING TaLe. After Madame Ronner

Witp Car. After Karl Bodmer |

CaT AND SERPENT. After Karl Bodmer F

Tue Kinc or THE Beasts. After E. van Muyden
BENGAL Ticer. After E. van Muyden

COMING FROM THE Fair. After Rosa Bonheur

Horses IN Freepom. After J. Veyrassat

FLemisH Dray Horse .

QurEN’s LirE GUARDSMAN

FRONT OF THE PARTHENON

HORSES FROM THE PARTHENON FRIEZE .

AN AkAB HORSE
Rosa BoNHEUR

frontispiece

PAGE

CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS.

I. DOGS.

THERE is a little skull amongst the bones I have col-
lected for the study of anatomy, which any slightly sci-
entific person would at once recognise as that of a dog.
It is a beautiful little skull, finely developed, and one sees
at a glance that the animal, when it was alive, must have
possessed more than ordinary intelligence. The scientific
lecturer would consider it rather valuable as an illustration
of cranial structure in the higher animals; he might com-
pare it with the skull of a crocodile, and deduce conclusions
as to the manifest superiority of the canine brain.

To me this beautiful little example of Divine con-
struction may be a teacher of scientific truths, but it is
also a great deal more than that. My memory clothes
it with mobile muscles and skin, covered with fine, short
hair, in patches of white and yellow. Where another sees
only hollow sockets in which lurk perpetual shadows, I
can see bright eyes wherein the sunshine played long
ago, just as it plays in the topaz depths of some clear
northern rivulet. I see the ears too, though the skull
has none; and the ears listen and the eyes gaze with an
infinite love and longing.

She was the friend of my boyhood, reader, the com-
panion of a thousand rambles, and when she died my
boyhood was dead also and became part of the irrecover-
ble past. There is an indentation in the bone, due to an

B I

2 Chapters on Animals.

ihn i
a

ay
Ah ah is .

Nt : i

HEAD OF A FOX-TERRIER.
Pen drawing by E. H. Saunders, after Helena Maguire.

accident. How well I remember all about that accident!
How tenderly we nursed her, how glad we were when she
got well again and followed me according to her wont!
I wonder how many miles we have travelled together, she

Dogs. 4

and I, along the banks of our own stream and out on the
purple moors!

Of course the reader cannot be expected to care very
much about a poor little terrier that only loved its young
master, as all dogs will, by reason of the instinct that is in
them, and died more than eighteen years ago. I am will-
ing to believe that millions of dogs have been as good as
she was, and a great deal more valuable in the market,
but no skull in the best natural history collection in
Europe could tempt me to part with this. Every year
makes the relic more precious, since every year certain
recollections gradually fade, and this helps me to recover
them. You may think that it is a questionable taste to
keep so ghastly a reminder. It does not seem ghastly to
me, but is only as the dried flower that we treasure in
some sacred book. When I think by how much devoted
affection this bony tenement was once inhabited, it seems
to me still a most fair and beautiful dwelling. The prevail-
ing idea that reigned there was the image of me, her
master. Shall I scorn this ivory cell in which my own
picture had ever the place of honour?

Many a man past the middle of life remembers with a
quite peculiar and especial tenderness that one dog which
was the dear companion of his boyhood. No other canine
friend can ever be to us exactly what that one was... .
I had a dog of great gifts, exceptionally intelligent, who
would obey a look where another needed an order, and of
rare beauty both of colour and form. One evening in the
twilight we went out together, and, as cruel fate would
have it, I crossed a valley where there was a deep and
rapid stream. Rapid and deep it was, yet not much wider
than the Strid at Bolton, and there was a mill and a nar-
row rustic bridge. My poor dog lingered behind a few

4 Chapters on Animals.

minutes in the deepening twilight and I called for him in
vain. He had tried to leap across between the bridge and
the mill, and was hurried to destruction along an irresisti-
ble current, between walls of pitiless stone on which he
had no hold. I cannot think of that twilight even now
without painful sorrow for my poor, imprudent compan-
ion. All dogs are worth keeping, but there are very
great differences in their natural gifts, and that one had
a rare intelligence. He would sit studying his master’s
face, and had become from careful observation so acute
a physiognomist that he read whatever thoughts of mine
had any concern for him... .

Man has succeeded in domesticating several other ani-
mals, but where else has he found this spirit of uncon-
querable fidelity? It has not been developed by kind
treatment, it has not even been sought for in itself, or
made an aim in breeding. Ladies make pets of their
dogs, but all the shepherds I see around me pay them in
kicks, and curses, and starvation. What does the obscure
member of a pack of foxhounds know of his master’s
love? As much as a Prussian private in the rifle-pit
knew of the tender heart of Moltke. I have seen a great
deal of the life of the French peasantry, but never to this
day have I seen a peasant caress his dog otherwise than
with a stick or a wooden shoe. There is a well-known
picture by Decamps, called “ The Kennel,” which repre-
sents a huntsman visiting his hounds, and he is lashing
with a ponderous whip. Thousands of dogs, whole gener-
ations of them, have known man in no other character
than that of a merciless commander, punishing the
slightest error without pity, yet bestowing no reward.

A. G. Decamps, b. 1803, d. 1860. A famous French painter of animals and
of the wilder and more picturesque aspects of nature.

Dogs. 5

There are countries where the dogs are never fed, where
they are left to pick up a bare existence amongst the
vilest refuse, and where they walk like gaunt images of
famine, living skeletons, gnawing dry sticks in the wintry
moonlight, doing Nature’s scavenger-work like rats. Yet
in every one of these miserable creatures beats the noble
canine heart —that heart whose depths of devotion have
never yet been sounded to the bottom; that heart which

THE KENNEL.
Pen drawing after a lithograph by A. G. Decamps, by E. H. Saunders.

forgets all our cruelty, but not the smallest evidence of
our kindness. If these poor animals had not been made
to love us, what excellent reasons they would have had
for hating us! Their love has not been developed by
care and culture, like the nourishing ears of wheat; but
it rises like warm, natural springs, where man has done
nothing either to obtain them or to deserve them. .
Our dogs adore us without a suspicion of our shortcom-
ings. There is only one exception, but this is a grave one,
and must not on any account be forgotten. A good sport-

6 Chapters on Animals.

ing dog has always an intense contempt for a bad sports-
man, so that a man who cannot shoot with a decent degree
of skill does best, like a miserable amateur violinist, to
abstain from practising altogether.

There are thousands of anecdotes illustrating the won-
derful affection which dogs bear to their masters, and as
the world goes on thousands of other examples will be

ak

POINTERS.
Pen drawing after Karl Bodmer, by D. Munro.

recorded, but no one will ever know the full marvel of that
immense love and devotion. It is inexhaustible, like the
beauty of what is most beautiful in nature, like the glory
of sunsets and the rich abundance of that natural loveli-
ness which poets and artists can never quite reveal. We do
not know the depth of it even in the dogs we have always
with us. I have one who is neither so intelligent nor so
affectionate as others I have known, and to my human
ignorance it seemed that he did not love me very much.

Dogs. 7

But once, when I had been away for weeks, his melan-
choly longing, of which he had said nothing to anybody,
burst out in a great passionate crisis. He howled and
clamoured for admission into my dressing-room, pulled
down my old things from their pegs, dragged them into
a corner, and flung himself upon them, wailing long and
wildly where he lay, till a superstitious fear came on all
the house like the forerunner of evil tidings. Who can
tell what long broodings, unexpressed, had preceded this
passionate outburst? Many a dark hour had he passed in
silent desolation, wondering at that inexplicable absence,
till at length the need for me became so urgent that he
must touch some cloth that I had worn.

We know not the heart-memory which these animals
possess, the long-retaining, tender recollection, all bound
up with their love. A dog was bereaved of his master
and afterwards became old and blind, passing the dark
evening of his existence sadly in the same corner, which
he hardly ever quitted. One day came a step like that of
his lost master, and he suddenly left his place. The man
who had just entered wore ribbed stockings; the old dog
had lost his scent and referred at once to the stockings
that he remembered, rubbing his face against them. Be-
lieving that his master had returned after those weary
years of absence, he gave way to the most extravagant
delight. The man spoke, the momentary illusion was dis-
pelled, the dog went sadly back to his place, lay wearily
down, and died.

These little anecdotes, and there are many such, give us
glimpses of what is permanent in the canine heart. We
think that dogs are demonstrative, but they have regrets
of which they tell us nothing. It is likely that the old
blind dog, coiled up in his corner day and night, mourn-

8 Chapters on Animals.

fully cherished the recollection of his lost master, thinking
of him when the people in the house little suspected those
yearnings of melancholy retrospect. There is nothing in
nature so sad as that obscure despair. The dog is high
enough in the scale of being to feel the regrets of absence
in all their bitterness, yet not high enough to have his
anxieties relieved by any word of explanation. Whether
his master has gone to the next country, or across the sea,
or to Heaven, he has no possible means of ascertaining —
he only feels the long sorrow of separation, the aching of
the solitary heart, the weariness of hope deferred, the
anxiety that is never set at rest.

So great is their power of loving that we cannot help
assigning to dogs—not formally, but in our inward esti-
mates —a place distinct from the brute creation generally.

. To kill a dog is always felt to be a sort of murder; it
is the destruction of a beautiful spirit, and the destruction
is the more lamentable for its very completeness.

When I was a boy I remember crossing a stream in
Lancashire just as a workman came to the same place fol-
lowed by a sharp-looking little brown terrier dog. It went
snuffing about under the roots as such little dogs will, and
then the man whistled and it came to him at full speed.
He caressed it, spoke to it very kindly but very sadly, and
then began to tie a great stone to its neck.

“ What are you doing that for?’’ I asked.

“Because I cannot afford to pay the dog-tax, and
nobody else shall have my little Jip.”

Then he threw it into the stream. ... The man turned
away with a pale, hard face, suffering, in that moment,
more than he cared to show, and I went my way carrying
with me an impression which is even now as strong as
ever it was. I felt that what I had witnessed was a

Dogs. 9

murder. Many years after, I shot a dog of my own (a
magnificent blood-hound mastiff) because he was an irre-
claimable sheep-killer; but the revolver I did it with
instantly became so hateful that I could not bear the
sight of it, and never fired it afterwards. Even now, if
he could but be raised from the dead, how gladly would
I welcome him, how securely would I rely for perfect for-
giveness on his noble canine magnanimity! No, these
creatures are not common brutes, they are our most trust-
ing friends, and we cannot take away their lives without a
treacherous betrayal of that trust.

A word came under my pen just now by accident which
belongs quite peculiarly to the canine nature. It does not
belong to all dogs; there are little breeds which seem to
be almost destitute of it, but all the nobler breeds are
magnanimous. As we are told to go to the ant to learn
industry, so we may go to the dog for an example of mag-
nanimity. The finest touches of it in his nature are not
so much in the absolute insensibility to offence as in his
courteous willingness to attribute offences which he cannot
possibly overlook to some pardonable mistake of yours, or
blameable error of his own. Even when most severely
punished he never seems to doubt the justice of the pun-
ishment, but takes it in the finest possible temper. . . .

And pray observe that with all this submissiveness, with
all this readiness to forget your severity and to bask in the
first gleam of the sunshine of your clemency, there is not
the faintest trace of snobbishness in his nature. The dog
is faithful to his master even when he gets hardly any-
thing out of him. It is said that every dog is an aristo-
crat, because rich men’s dogs cannot endure beggars and
their rags, and are civil only to well-dressed visitors. But
the truth is that, from sympathy for his master, the dog

10 Chapters on Animals.

always sees humanity very much from his master’s point
of view. The poor man’s dog does not dislike the poor.
I may go much farther than this, and venture to assert
that a dog who has lived with you for years will make the
same distinction between your visitors that you make your-
self, inwardly, notwithstanding the apparent uniformity of
your outward politeness. My dog is very civil to people I

Wha
lez

at
4,

y AG
Soo}

THE FAITHFUL WATCH-DOG.
Pen drawing after Karl Bodmer, by D. Munro.

like, but he is savage to those I dislike, whatever the tailor
may have done to lend them external charms. I know
not how he discovers these differences in my feelings,
except it be by overhearing remarks when the guests are
gone.

How much do dogs really understand of our language?
Perhaps a good deal more than we generally imagine.
Please observe that in learning a foreign tongue you
arrive at a certain stage where most of what the foreign

Dogs. II

people say is broadly intelligible to you, and yet you
cannot express yourself at all. Very young children
understand a great deal before they are able to express
themselves in words. Even horses—and horses are
incomparably less intelligent than dogs—understand a
complete vocabulary of orders. May not a dog of ability
enter, to some extent, into the meaning of spoken lan-
guage even though he may never be able to use it? With-
out giving the reins to imagination, it may be presumed
that some dogs know at least the names of different people,
and may take note of the manner, cordial or otherwise,
in which we pronounce them. Whatever they may know
of spoken language, it is quite clear that they understand
the language of manner, and have a very delicate appreci-
ation of human behaviour.

Besides the love which the dog has for his master, and
for him alone, he has his friendships and acquaintances
with humanity. And as a married man may quite inno-
cently establish friendships with ladies whom he likes and
respects, so the most faithful of dogs may have kindly
feelings for men who stand in no nearer relation to him
than that of acquaintance. All my friends’ dogs are
polite acquaintances of mine, and conduct themselves
with becoming courtesy. One fat lady is the happy
owner of the tiniest creature that ever aspired to the
dignity of dog-hood, and as our acquaintance seemed to
have ripened into an intimacy, I invited Bellona (for such
was her warlike name) to share with me the perilous pleas-
ures of a canoe-voyage. This, however, was presuming
too far, and at the first landing she deserted the ship
and fled homewards, like a frightened rabbit, across the
fields. ...

Bellona — the Roman goddess of war.

12 Chapters on Animals.

Sometimes a dog will forget a mere friend, though he
never forgets his master. I remember crossing a public
square in winter, at midnight, and seeing a poor lost dog
that I recognised as an old acquaintance. There could be
no mistake about it, she had every physical mark and sign
of the gentle little creature that I knew, the only cause
of doubt was that she could not be induced to give the
slightest, —no, not the very slightest, sign of recognition.
I caught her and carried her in my arms to the hotel,
held her up to the light, examined every mark —the body
was all there, but where was the friendly heart that used
to beat with gladness when we met, far in the quiet coun-
try, in the lanes and fields about her home? I put her
down, and she immediately escaped and was lost again in
the windings of the streets. The next morning I went
early to the farm she lived at and inquired if she were lost.
Yes, it was true, she had been lost in the confusion of the
fair. Later, she found her own way back again and behaved
to me as amiably as ever. Probably, in the town, the sight
of so many people had bewildered her till she could not
recognise a friend, but a dog knows his master every-
where.

GREYHOUND,
Pen drawing from a sketch by J. L. Géréme, by E. H. Saunders.

ae
ENGLISH SETTERS.
By D. Munro.

II. DOGS (continued).

Woutp that dogs could communicate their health and
energy to us, as they can their fearful malady! They
possess, in a much higher degree than man, the power of
storing up energy in times of repose, and keeping it for
future use. A dog spends his spare time in absolute rest,
and is able to endure great drains of energy on due occa-
sion. He lies idly by the fire, and looks so lazy that it
seems as if nothing could make him stir, yet at a sign
from his master he will get up and go anywhere, without
hesitation about the distance. In old age dogs know that
they have not any longer these great reserves of force, and
decline to follow their masters who go out on horseback,
but will still gladly follow them on any merely pedestrian
excursion, well knowing the narrow limits of human
strength and endurance. Dogs in the prime of life accom-
plish immense distances, not without fatigue, for these
efforts exhaust them for the moment, but they have such
great recuperative power that they entirely recover by rest.

13

14 Chapters on Animals.

I know a very small dog that was given by his master to
a friend who lived sixty miles off. His new proprietor
carried him in the inside of a coach; but the next morning
the little animal was in his old home again, having found
his way across country, and a most fatiguing and bewilder-
ing country too, covered with dense forests and steep hills.
Has the reader ever observed how much swifter dogs are
than their behaviour would lead one to imagine? Here is
an illustration of what I mean. I know a very rapid coach
which is always preceded by a middling-sized dog of no
particular breed. Well, this dog amuses itself within a
yard of the horses’ hoofs, turning round, leaping, looking
at other vehicles, snapping at other dogs, barking at its
own and other horses, and leading, in a word, exactly the
same kind of life as if it were amusing itself in the inn-
yard before starting. Now, consider a little the amazing
perfection of organization, the readiness and firmness of
nerve, required for motions so complicated as these, and
the bodily energy, too, necessary to keep them up, not for
a few yards, but mile after mile as the coach rattles along
the road! One false step, one second of delay, and the
dog would be under the hoofs of the horses, yet he plays
as children play on the sea-shore before the slowly advanc-
ing tide. With the dog’s energy, and a wiser economy
of it, a man could run a hundred miles without an interval
of rest.

We make use of the delicate faculty of scent possessed
by these animals to aid us in the chase, and are so accus-
tomed to rely upon it that its marvellousness escapes
attention. But we have no physical faculty so exquisite
as this. It it clear that the dog’s opinions about odours
must be widely different from ours, for he endures very
strong smells which to us are simply intolerable, and posi-

Dogs. is

tively enjoys what we abominate ; but as for true delicacy
of nerve, which I take to be the power of detecting what
is most faint, we cannot presume to the least comparison
with him. Every one who has gathered wild plants knows
what an immense variety of odours arise from the plants
upon the ground —this is the first complication ; next upon
that (though we cannot detect it) are traced in all directions
different lines of scent laid down by the passage of animals
and men—this is the second complication. Well, across
these labyrinths of misleading or disturbing odours the dog
follows the one scent he cares for at the time (notwith-
standing its incessant alteration by mixture) as easily as
we should follow a scarlet thread on a green field. If he
were only sensitive to the one scent he followed, the mar-
vel would be much reduced, but he knows many different
odours, and selects amongst them the one that interests
him at the time. The only human faculty comparable to
this is the perception of delicate tints by the most accom-
plished and gifted painters, but here I believe that the
intellectual powers of man do much in the education of the
eye. No young child could ever colour, though its eye
were physically perfect, and colouring power comes only
through study, which is always more or less a definitely
mental operation. The dog can hardly be said to study
scents, though long practice through unnumbered genera-
tions may have given refinement and precision to his
faculty.

In speaking of a power of this kind, possessed by
another animal, we are liable to mistakes which proceed
from our constant reference to our own human impercep-
tions. We think, for instance, that the odour of thyme
is strong, whilst for us the scent left by an animal in its
passage may be so faint as to be imperceptible; but

16 Chapters on Animals.

scents that are strong forus may be faint for dogs, and
vice-versa. Odours are not positive but relative, they
are sensations simply, and the same cause does not pro-
duce the same sensation in different organisms. A dog
rolls himself on carrion, and unreflecting people think this
a proof of a disgustingly bad taste on his part; but it is
evident that the carrion gives him a sensation entirely diff-

POINTER AND GREYHOUND.

erent from that which it produces in ourselves. I know a
man who says that to him the odour of any cheese what-
ever, even the freshest and soundest, is disgusting beyond
the power of language to express; is it not evident that
cheese produces in him a sensation altogether different
from what it causes in most of us? The smell and taste
of dogs may be not the less refined and delicate that they
differ widely from our own. The cazse of the most hor-
rible of all smells in my own experience is a mouse, but
the same cause produces, it is probable, an effect

Dogs. 17

altogether different upon the olfactory nerves of cats.
These mysteries of sensation, in other beings, are quite
unfathomable, and our human theories about delicacy of
taste are not worth a moment’s attention. The dog is
quite as good an authority on these questions as the best
of us.

I cannot think it is very surprising that dogs should re-
member odours well, since odours so long retain the power
of awakening old associations in ourselves. I distinctly
remember the odour of every house that was familiar to
me in boyhood, and should recognise it at'once. In the
same way dogs know the scent of a well-known footstep,
even after long separation. An officer returned home
after the Franco-German war and did not meet his dog.
After his arrival he watched for the dog through the win-
dow. He saw it at last in a state of intense excitement,
following his track at full speed, never raising its nostrils
from the ground, and then came the joyful meeting — the
scent had been recognised from the beginning, even in a
much-frequented street.

Innumerable anecdotes might be collected to illustrate
the reasoning power of dogs. A certain lawyer, a neigh-
bour of mine, has a dog that guards his money when
clients come into the office. There are two or three
pieces of furniture, and sometimes it happens that the
lawyer puts money into one or another of these, tempora-
rily, the dog always watching him, and guarding that par-
ticular piece of furniture where the money lies. In this
instance the dog had gradually become aware, from his
master’s manner, that money was an object of more than
ordinary solicitude ; in fact, he had been set to guard coin
left upon the table. I refrain from repeating current
stories about the sagacity of dogs, because, although many

vu

18 Chapters on Animals.

of them are perfectly credible, they are naturally exagger.
ated in transmission. I happened to be in a railway car-
riage where several sportsmen were telling marvellous
stories about their dogs, whilst an elderly man sat in his
corner and said nothing.

At last he spoke: “ Gentlemen,” he said, “all this is
very remarkable, but I have a dog who is still more won-
derful than the most wonderful of yours. For example,
you see that river; well, if I were to throw a sovereign
into that river, my dog would immediately plunge in and
bring me the change in silver.”

“Really, sir, you surprise me!” said one of the sports-
men, not quick enough to see the intended sarcasm.
Auguste Villemott used to tell a story with a like intention

about a blind man’s dog in Paris, which, after receiving .--

money for its master, continued the business after his
death, and accumulated a considerable fortune.

Let me add a few words about the treatment of these
faithful friends of ours. I need scarcely protest against
the ignorant and stupid mutilation of dogs by cutting their
ears and tail. From the artistic point of view this is bar-
barous in the last degree, because it spoils their instru-
ments of expression. It is like cutting out the tongue of
a human being. There is a poor dog near me whose tail
has been amputated at the very root, and the consequence
is he cannot tell me the half of what he thinks. Sir Ed-
win Landseer was greatly pleased to meet with a dog-
seller who would not mutilate his animals, for the reason
that “Sir Edwin Landseer did not approve of it.” In a
smaller way every one of us may exercise the same merci-
ful influence, and I earnestly request every reader of these
lines to discourage openly the mutilation of dogs and other
animals, It is an evil very generally prevalent and of

Dogs. 19

very long standing, and it is due to the desire for improv-
ing nature, for turning natural things as far as possible
into artificial things, which is instinctive in mankind and
leads to the most useful results; but this is one of its false
directions. People who are only partially civilised do not
see where they ought to respect nature, and where to
make alterations; so they cannot leave anything alone.
The highest civilisation does little more than remove im-
pediments to perfect natural growth, and accepts the
divine ideals as the ideals towards which it strives. The
best practical way to prevent people from mutilating dogs
is, not to reason on the subject (for reason is far too weak
to contend against custom), but to employ ridicule. I
make it a rule to tell everybody who keeps a mutilated
dog, that his dog is both ugly and absurd; and if a good
many people hear me, so much the better. There’ is
another very common sort of cruelty to dogs, which might
easily be prevented by the exercise of a little common
sense. Many dog-owners, especially kind-hearted but
weak-minded ladies, are accustomed to injure their pets by
giving them too much food and too little exercise. Pam-
pered dogs are certainly not the happiest dogs. Only look
at them! Cana creature which was intended by nature
for the most exuberant activity be said to enjoy life when
it can hardly waddle across a carpet? There is not an
honest doctor who, after examining the teeth and breath,
and observing the digestion of these wretched martyrs to
mistaken kindness, will not tell you that they have no
genuine health, and without that neither dog nor man can
be happy. If you really care about making your dog
happy, the way to do so is both extremely simple and per-
fectly well known. Feed him regularly and moderately,
see that his bodily functions go as they ought to do, and

20 Chapters on Animals.

vary his diet when necessary. Above all, give him plenty
of exercise, take him out with you into the fields and
woods — that is what he most enjoys. Keep him under a
strict and wholesome discipline, for dogs are happiest, as
men are, when wisely and steadily governed. Our ca-
resses ought to be reserved as a reward, or a recognition,
not given continually till the dog is weary of them. In
the same way, besides the regular food, we may give
occasionally little morsels out of kindness, because he
values the kindness, just as we like a cigar that a friend
gives us out of his own case. His happiness, like our
own, is best promoted by activity, by temperance, by
obedience to duty, and by the sort of affection that is not
incompatible with perfect dignity, of which every noble
dog has his full share.

But however healthy and happy a dog may be, there
comes a time at last when the gladness fades out of his
life. I see with sorrow that my poor old Tom feels
obliged to decline to follow me now when I go out on
horseback. This is one of the first symptoms of old age,
and he does not hear so well or see so well as formerly.
Still, on a bright morning, when we go out in the woods
together, he is quite himself again, apparently, and the old
activity revives. It is that last renewal of summer which
precedes the frosts of autumn, that after-glow in the
western sky which is so swiftly followed by the leaden
greys of night. One of my neighbours has an old dog
that can neither hear nor see, and passes the dark, silent
days in an arm-chair which has been given to him for the
comfort of hisage. One sound is audible by him still, and
one only —a little shrill silver whistle that he has obeyed
from puppyhood till now. It is one of the most pathetic
sights I ever witnessed, when the master comes and sounds

Dogs. 21

the piercing call. The inert thing in the arm-chair
becomes galvanised with sudden life, tumbles down upon
the floor, crawls towards the sound, finds the beloved hand,
and licks it. They pass whole evenings together still, that
gentle master and his poor old friend. And still in
that dark decrepitude beats the heart of inextinguishable
love. ...

Although dogs have been more or less painted and carved
since men used brush and chisel, they have never held so
important a position in art as they do now. The modern
love of incident in pictures, the modern delight in what
has been aptly called “literary interest” as distinguished
from the pure pleasure of the eyes, naturally induce us to
give a very high place to dogs, which more than all other
animals are capable of awakening an interest of this kind.
The dog is so close to man, so intimately associated with
his life, both in the field and in the house, that he becomes
a sharer in many of its incidents, and the painter scarcely
needs a pretext for introducing him. In such a picture,
for example, as the “Order of Release” (by Millais), the
dog has his due importance as a member of the family,
and the painter does not ignore the canine gladness and
affection. And so in the illustration by the same artist, of
that charming old Scottish song, “There is nae luck about
the house,” the dog is first out of doors to go and meet the
gudeman. In Landseer’s “ Shepherd’s Chief Mourner,”
the dog is alone in his lamentation, and yet we feel that
the bereaved creature is in the place that is his by a natural
right, by right of long service, of constant companionship,
of humble faithful friendship and deep love. You paint a
portrait of Sir Walter Scott, why not introduce Maida ?—
of young Lord Byron, why not put brave Boatswain by
his side? These creatures rejoice with us in our sports

THE ORDER OF RELEASE,
Pen drawing by E. H. Saunders, after the painting by Sir John Millais.

Dogs. F 23

and at our festivals, and they mourn for us in the hour of
that separation which religion and science agree to consider
eternal. We, too, mourn for them, when they leave us, and
pass from the fulness of life into the abyss of nothing-
ness. There may be human relatives for whom you will
wear funeral hatbands, for whom you will blacken the

THE SHEPHERD'S CHIEF MOURNER.

Pen drawing by E. H. Saunders, after Sir Edward Landseer.

borders of envelopes and cards, and who, nevertheless,
will not be regretted with that genuine sorrow that the
death of a dog will bring. Many a tear is shed every year
in England for the loss of these humble friends, and many
a heart has been relieved by the welcome tidings, “ There’s
life in the old dog yet.”

Il]. CANINE GUESTS.

There is so much in this paper which must naturally seem incredible that
I think it necessary to assure the reader how scrupulously I have endeavoured
to narrate the facts simply as I saw them. On my honour, the narrative is,
if not absolutely true, at least as true as I can make it by a comparison of
what I observed myself, with the observation of a dozen other witnesses.

Havine heard that two very wonderful dogs were per-
forming within fifty miles of my house, I invited them to
come and visit me. ... They were invited to dine and
spend the evening; and as the weather was very wet they
stayed all night and breakfasted next morning, so that I
had every opportunity of making their acquaintance.

Madame du Rouil informed me that her husband had
been for ten years a teacher in a deaf-and-dumb institu-
tion, which had given him the idea of trying how far a
similar method of education might develope the intelligence
of dogs. He had also been a conjurer, and these two
professions had prepared him for the one he at present
exercised. When he began to train his first dog it was
not with any idea of future profit, but simply out of curi-
osity to see the effects of the sort of education which
seemed to him best adapted for establishing a close under-
standing between the human and canine minds. Seeing
that the plan succeeded he began to take the dog with
him to the entertainments he gave in Paris, and as the
public were interested he went on educating his pupil.
Since then he has educated two other dogs on the same
principles, one of whom has completed her training, whilst
the other is an advanced, but not yet a finished, student.

24

Canine Guests. 25

I had a good opportunity, at dinner, of observing the
master himself. There was not the faintest trace of any-
thing like charlatanism in his manner. A very quiet,
grave, serious, even sad-looking old gentleman, dressed
soberly in black, he talked about places he had visited
and about the political news of the day. The impression
he made upon us was altogether favourable. He reminded
me most of some respectable old school-master or librarian,
who had seen a good deal of the world and reflected on
what he had seen, but whose thoughts were tinged with
a deepening gravity, the result of narrowed fortune and
weakened health. I learned afterwards that there were
ample reasons for this sadness. M. du Rouil had had two
sons killed in the Franco-Prussian war and another se-
verely wounded, whilst his daughter, a pretty girl of eigh-
teen, had been killed by a shell at Neuilly in the sanguinary
days of the Commune. His house, too, had been sacked
by the Communards, and a small business which his wife
managed had been put an end to. The capital invested
in that little business had been earned by the dog Bianca,
of whom, and her daughter Lyda, it is time to give a
description.

Bianca, or Blanche, as her master familiarly calls her,
is a bitch of the pure canzche breed. I use the French
word because although we have an English one, “ poodle,”
I rather think that the word poodle does not distinguish
between the real caniche and the chzen-mouton, another
very intelligent breed from which performing dogs are
frequently taken. Of M. du Rouil’s three pupils one is
a pure caniche, the other (Lyda) is a cross between the
caniche and the spaniel, whilst the third is a chzen-mouton,

Commune refers to a rising of the people in Paris against the government
after the Germans had besieged the city in 1871.

26 Chapters on Animals.

thoroughbred. The caniche is silky-haired and has often
patches of brown about the face, but the white hair is like
snow, whereas the chéen-mouton approaches both in colour
and texture much more nearly to the sheep, and never has
any patches of brown.
Only Blanche and
Lyda came to my
house; the other dog
has begun to perform
in public, but is not
yet so accomplished as
these two.

They behaved at
dinner exactly like
common dogs, but
when I offered Blanche
a piece of cheese and
asked if she knew the
word for that substance, her master answered that she
could spell it very correctly. I had invited a few friends
to meet these learned animals, and when they were assem-
bled in the drawing-room we made the little preparations
which M. du Rouil said would be most convenient. A large
octagonal library-table was put in the middle of the room
with a cloth of one colour and a lamp inthe centre. Round
this table Madame du Rouil laid cards with all the letters
of the alphabet, printed in large capitals. There was also
a little hand-bell. At a sign from her master Blanche
jumped upon the table and sat in an attitude of expec-
tation.

Then M. du Rouil turned to me and said, “I promised
you that the dog should spell fromage (cheese). Blanche,
spell fromage.”

CHIEN-MOUTON,

Canine Guests. 27

Blanche immediately set about her work and brought an
F, an R, and an O, then she hesitated.

“You have only given us three letters, and there are
seven in the word.”

On this, she soon found M, A, G, E, and the word was
complete. The next task was a translation. We were in-
vited to write upon a slate any Latin, German, or English

CHIEN-CANICHE,

word in which the same letter did not occur twice. Some
one present wrote, in German hand-writing, the word jpterd
(horse), and M. du Rouil showed the slate to Blanche. She
either read it or pretended to read it, and made a sign that
she understood by putting the slate down with her paw.

“ Now give us the French for that word;” she immedi-
ately brought C, and then H, E, V, A, L.

“ As you are spending the evening at an Englishman’s
house, Blanche, would you oblige him by translating that
word into English?”

28 Chapters on Animals.

Without hesitation the dog gave me an H, and with very
little hesitation the remaining letters, O, R, S, E.

Notwithstanding her success, the dog seemed to set
about her work very unwillingly and it was evidently a great
effort to her. The authority of the master, though very
gently exercised, appeared to be irresistible, exactly like
that of a mesmerist over his patient. Blanche complained
audibly the whole time with a sound between growling
and whining, and occasionally a short bark of uneasiness.
Observing this, I said that for the present that part of the
performance might be considered satisfactory, and we
would pass on to something else. M. du Rouil then told
us that Blanche could correct bad spelling, and invited me
to write a word on the slate with an intentional fault in it.

He showed the slate to the dog, and said, ‘‘ There’s a
fault here, Blanche; find it out, and show us first what let-
ter ought to be effaced.”

The word I had written was wazson (house), but I had
spelt it wéson. The dog immediately brought the letter E.
Then M. du Rouil requested Blanche to show us what let-
ters ought to be substituted, and she fetched an A and an I.

As Blanche seemed tired and worried with this kind of
work I intervened on her behalf, and she was allowed to
go and curl herself up in a corner, and eat cakes. Lyda
took her place on the table, and a set of figures were sub-
stituted for the alphabet. Some arithmetical problems
were written on the slate and she resolved them (or ap-
peared to resolve them) without a single misake. A very
pretty incident occurred at this period of the performance,
for the master proposed a little mental arithmetic.

“Now, Lyda,” he said, ‘I want to see whether you un-
derstand division. Suppose you had ten lumps of sugar,
and you met ten Prussian dogs, how many lumps would

Canine Guests. 29

you, we Francaise (a French lady), give to each of the
Prussians?”

Lyda very decidedly replied to this with a cipher.

“But now suppose that you divided your lumps of sugar
with me, how many would you give me?’ Lyda took up
the figure 5, and presented it to her master.

This was pretty enough, but for reasons of my own I
was much more interested in something that happened im-
mediately afterwards.

M. du Rouil guztted the room, the door was closed after
him, and he called out, “ Which is the least valuable figure ?”

Lyda brought me the cipher.

Then her master said, “‘ Which is the most valuable fig-
ure?” the dog brought me the 9.

After this I asked for different figures, which the dog
gave me without a single mistake.

It was Blanche’s turn next, but this time instead of be-
ing surrounded with the letters of the alphabet she was
surrounded with playing-cards. M. du Rouil had another
pack in his hand, and told us to choose a card. ‘“‘ Blanche,
what card has been chosen?” The dog always took up
the right card in her teeth. Then she played a game with
a young lady, and lost it, after which she rushed from her
seat into the corner with an air of the deepest humiliation.

A very surprising thing followed the game of cards.
M. du Rouil begged me to go into another room and leave
a light on the floor with a pack of cards arranged all round
it and close the doors as nearly as possible without shutting
them. This being done, he begged any one present to
whisper in the.dog’s ear the name of a card to be fetched
by her from the other room. A lady whispered the “ knave
of hearts,” if I remember rightly, but in so low a voice as
to be inaudible even by the dog, which made a mistake,

30 Chapters on Animals.

and brought something else. She was then requested to
bring the ace of spades, and she soon came back from the
dining-room with the ace of spades in her teeth.

Both the dogs played a game of dominoes. This was
managed as follows: the dogs sat on chairs opposite each
other, and took up the domino that was wanted; but the
master or mistress placed it, and kept announcing the state
of the game. Their distress when they could not go on
without drawing upon the bank was expressed in piteous
whines, and amused us all immensely. Lyda was the loser,
and she precipitately retreated to hide herself, with an evi-
dent consciousness of defeat.

I had not quite done with my literary examination of Bi-

. anca, so [ had the alphabet replaced and began again. I
asked her what was the English for chzev, and she put the
letters D, O, G, into my own hand. Then I asked her to
spell feu (fire), for me, and she gave me the three letters
F, E, U. Here an incident occurred which, notwithstand-
ing the marvels we have witnessed, thrilled us all with new
amazement. M. du Rouil interposed, and said, “ Blanche,
you have spelled the word correctly in the singular, but
cannot you give the plural?” My readers may believe me
or not, as they like, but the truth is, that she took up the
letter X between her teeth and came to me and placed it
in my hand. I asked her to give me the English for feu,
and wrote it down and handed it to M. du Rouil, but he
said she had not yet learned that word, and this deficit in
her education could not be remedied at once.

During the whole of this entertainment my mind was
intently occupied with a single problem, What dtd the dogs
really know ? I had been told a few days previously, by a
gentleman who had very keen powers of observation, that
a system of signals existed between M. du Rouil and his

Canine Guests. 31

dogs, by which he made them understand which card they
ought to take, and this gentleman believed that he had
detected the most important signal of all. ‘When M. du
Rouil means zo he advances towards the table, and when
he means yes he retires from it.” Another observer, younger
and much less intelligent, had told me that M. du Rouil,
having been a teacher of the deaf and dumb, simply used
signs with his fingers, which the dogs had learned to read.
These two theories may be disposed of very summarily.
When the entertainment began with the literary examina-
tion of Bianca, M. du Rouil stood on the hearth-rug, with his
back to the fire, and did not advance or retreat one inch;
whilst at the conclusion, when she gave the plural to the
word fez, I myself occupied M. du Rouil’s place, and he
was seated in an arm-chair, like the other spectators, and
with his back to the table. It is clear, therefore, that the
theory about advancing and retreating is not an explana- '
tion. Now, as for the other theory, that he communicates
with the dogs by means of manual signs, like those used
with the deaf and dumb, I need only observe that M. du
Rouil’s hands were as motionless as his feet. When we
began with fromage, pferd, etc., he held a tray in his right
hand, the arm being pendent by his side, whilst the left hand
was behind his back, the fingers closed, and as motionless as
those of a bronze Napoleon on a chimney-piece. He did
not even reserve to himself such liberty of motion as might
have been secured by taking the letters from the dog, for
when I proposed to take the letters myself he made no
objection whatever, but sat down quietly and let me do the
showman’s work. It is certain that the communication
was not made by any motion of the body; this, at least, I
can affirm quite positively. Was it done by the expression
of the eyes? At first we thought that this might be just

342 Chapters on Animals.

possible; but the table was octagonal, and the dog found
the letters when her back was turned to her master as
easily as when she could look him in the face; besides,
when M. du Rouil was seated, and I was the showman, he
did not look towards the dogs at all, but at the fire. What-
ever communication did take place must have been entirely
by intonations of the voice, but we could hear these as well
as the dogs could, and with all our listening we could detect
nothing like a regularly recurring and easily recognisable
signal. When he asked Blanche to turn fez into the plural,
he did it exactly with the words and in the manner that
you would use to a child at school. He often encouraged
the dogs with such words as Al/ons, allons! Cherches,
cherches bien! Vite, vite, vite! but he went on with these
encouragements exactly in the same words and in the same
tone after the word was completed to put the dog’s knowl-
edge to the test, and she went on seeking, and then whined
and rang a bell to say that there were no more letters
needed. I had been told that Blanche could, of course,
spell any word that her master could spell, because she
only took the letters le fixed upon, yet he said she could
not spell fre for me. This, however, may have been a
ruse on his part, and I do not insist upon it.

If the dogs had appeared to know rather less we should
have believed that the knowledge was really theirs, but
then they seemed to know too much. Lyda showed us
some tricks with numbers, that are familiar to arithmeticians,
but clearly beyond the canine comprehension. This satis-
fied me that some communication existed, and yet I was
utterly unable to detect it. It is clear, therefore, that the
dogs understood and acted upon a system of signalling
which the intelligence of the human spectators was not

Allons ... Vite. Goon, go on! fetch, fetch it! quick, quick, quick!

Canine Guests. 33

keen enough to discover. I had invited several intelligent
friends, and told them previously that my object was to
discover the secret of the confederacy between M. du
Rouil and his dogs, begging their best assistance. They
watched him as closely as I did, but could detect nothing.

Remembering an odd notion of Sydney Smith’s, that
people might be taught to read by odours, the idea occurred
to me that M. du Rouil might contrive to touch the cards
that the dogs selected, and curiously enough they certainly
smelt them rather than looked at them. But how could
such a supposition be reconcilable with the fact that M. du
Rouil kept at a distancé from the table, and could not pos-
sibly foresee the words that we asked for? I only men-
tion this hypothesis of reading by odour to show to what
straits we were reduced in our guessing.

As the dogs and their owner were to stay all night at my
house, I determined to have a quiet talk with him when
everybody else was gone, and get at the secret if I could.
So when we were quite alone together I plied him with
indiscreet questions, and he was frank enough up to a cer-
tain point, but beyond that point absolutely impenetrable.

He confessed at once that there was a secret, but he said,
“La ficelle est bien cachée,’ as indeed it was. Accord-
ing to his account, which was probably quite true as
far as it went, the dogs were like actors, who had not
quite thoroughly mastered their parts, and he himself was
like the prompter near the footlights. To begin with,
Blanche really knew the letters of the alphabet and the
playing-cards by their names, and Lyda really knew all
the figures. In addition to this, he said that Blanche had
studied about a hundred and fifty words in different lan-
guages, something like twenty in each language, words

La ficelle. . cachée. The secret is well kept.
D

34 Chapters on Animals.

most likely to be called for, such as chien, dog, horse, cat,
pferd, canis, etc., etc. The restriction to one set of letters
simplified the business considerably. But M. du Rouil
confessed quite frankly that she could not get through a
word unless he were present. On the other hand he could
not make her spell a word in public that she had not before
practised with him in private. So it was with Lyda and
the figures. She really knew the figures when isolated, and
this had been satisfactorily demonstrated when he left the
room, and she gave me the number asked for, upto9. But
he would not tell me the secret of the confederacy. I told
him what guesses had been made on the subject, but he
simply answered that I must have observed how impossible
it was for him to make signs with hands or feet when he
moved neither hand nor foot.

Would he give me some account of the earlier stages
of training through which these dogs had passed? Yes,
very willingly. The first thing was to teach a dog to fetch
an object, the next to make him discriminate between one
of two very different objects placed together, and bring
one or the other as it was mentioned by its name. In
beginning the alphabet he put two most dissimilar letters
side by side to begin with, such as an O and an I, avoid-
ing the confusion of similar ones, such as O and Q, or B
and R. Gradually, the dog became observant enough to
discriminate between letters in which the difference was
not so marked. M. du Rouil told me that he had found
the greatest difficulty in teaching Blanche to distinguish
between the knaves and kings in playing-cards, but that
she learned the aces very promptly. With regard to the
time required for educating a dog sufficiently to perform
in public, he said that an hour a day for eighteen months
was the time required, and he preferred a single hour to a

Canine Guests. a

longer lesson, because the dog’s powers of attention were
soon fatigued. He added, that it was impossible to edu-
cate a dog at any other time than the middle of the night,
because the slightest’ sound disturbed it, and made it for-
get the work that had to be done. I inquired what, after
his ten years’ experience, was his opinion of the intelligence
of dogs, and he answered, with great emphasis, “that it is
infinite.”

Beyond this he would tell nothing. The only supposi-
tion not immediately annihilated by the facts, is that the
tone of voice used in uttering the words “ Al/ons, allons ;
Cherchez, cherches bien, Cherchez encore; Vite, vite, vite,”
conveyed to the animal, “You are far from the card,”
“You are nearer the card,” “That is the card you must
take up;”’ but even here there were great difficulties, for
M. du Rouil continued, as far as we could detect, in the
same tone after the completion of the word, and yet the
dog never brought a superfluous letter. The marvellous-
ness of so perfect a confederacy may be better understood
by supposing a human confederate in the dog’s place.
Such a human confederate, not knowing the words to be
composed, would be very liable to make mistakes, and
bring a wrong letter from time to time; but Blanche never
made one mistake — never brought one wrong letter.

I certainly observed that when she got near the letter
she always hesitated between it and its neighbours on each
side, but she always finally took the letter that was wanted.

She got on much faster with one or two words than she
did with the others, and seemed to need less encourage-
ment. My conclusion was, that from long practice with
certain familiar words (she had worked at the business
daily for several years) she could compose those words

Cherchez encore, Seek it again.

36 Chapters on Animals.

with very little help. The last word, few, and the X to
make a plural of it, were given quickly, others not so
quickly. The use of the X was clever, but not so surpris-
ing as it seemed to us at the moment, for with a dog so
well trained as Blanche it would be easy, I should imagine,
to associate the word “ plural” with the image of the letter
X. Very probably Blanche had been taught, in her private
lessons, to fetch that letter whenever “ plurze/” (plural)
was asked for. As for the translation, without going so
far in credulity as to fancy that the dog really translated,
I may suggest that from long practice there would cer-
tainly arise in her mind an association of ideas between
cheval and horse, chicn and dog, since the words must have
been asked for hundreds or thousands of times in that
close connection, so that she would at least be better pre-
pared to spell dog, after having just spelt chzew.

An incident occurred in the course of the evening which
showed some understanding of language. A little girl
wanted Blanche to come to her, but the dog kept away,
on which Madame du Rouil said, ‘“‘ Blanche, allez saluer
la petite demoiselle.”’ She immediately went up to the
little girl and made a formal obeisance. A lady present,
the daughter of a landowner in the Sologne, told us that
on her father’s estate the shepherd’s dogs were taught to
go in four directions at the word of command — 4 avoite,
a gauche, cn avant, and en arriéere.

The conclusion we arrived at was, that the performance
resulted from an extremely clever combination of previous
training with scarcely perceptible prompting, that the dogs
were really wonderfully educated and knew a great deal,
though not so much as they appeared to know. The game

adroite. . arriére. Right, left, forward, backward.
Alles... demotselle, Go and greet the little lady.

Canine Guests. 37

at dominoes was decidedly the prettiest instance of their
real knowledge, for they took up the numbers just as they
were asked for. It seems evident that an intelligent dog
might be taught to know a considerable variety of objects
by their names.

M. du Rouil told us an anecdote of Blanche which may
be easily believed by any one who has made her acquaint-
ance. He was going home one night from Paris to
Neuilly, after a performance, and saw a man who was
seeking for some object that he had lost. ‘What are you
seeking?”’ he asked. The man answered that he had lost
280 francs. ‘“ Possibly my dog may be able to find them
for you; have you any money left? If you have, show
her a piece of gold. Allez, cherchez, Blanche!” The
dog set out and fetched first one piece of gold and then
another and then a banknote till the 280 francs were com-
pleted. Then followed many other anecdotes about dogs
of which I select these. A lady said that she had known
a dog that belonged to a celebrated publisher in Paris who
had a country-house at Auteuil. Every Friday his family
went to Auteuil, and always regularly found the dog there
on their arrival. He went alone, through Paris, from the
Rue de l’ Ancitenne Comédic, and he never made a mistake
about the day. The family frequently went out on other
days, but on these occasions the dog stayed contentedly
at home. Another dog that she had also known had been
bred in a strictly Catholic family, and would never touch
meat on a Friday. Bets were made, and the greatest
temptations used to overcome his conscientious scruples,
but always in vain. He was shut up in a room during a
whole Friday with meat in his reach, but preferred to
suffer hunger rather than touch it. One of my friends

Allez, cherchez, Blanche! Go seek it, Blanche.

38 Chapters on Animals.

mentioned a dog that he knew quite well which lost its
master three years ago from small-pox, and ever since
then, in all weathers, has paid a daily visit to the ceme
tery, where it mourns upon his grave. The widow goes
to the grave on Sundays after mass, the dog knows this,
waits for her at the church-door, and accompanies her.

Lyda has one quality which would make her invaluable
to an artist. Every painter who has attempted to draw
dogs knows how provokingly restless they always are,
and how impossible it is to study them as we do the human
model. But Lyda foscs as perfectly as any human model
at the Royal Academy. I made a drawing of her the
morning after the performance and was delighted. Liter-
ally not a hatr stirred during the whole time. She had the
stillness of a stuffed animal in a museum, with that perfec-.
tion of living form which no taxidermist was ever yet able
to imitate or preserve. A dog so perfectly trained as Lyda
would be a priceless treasure for an animal-painter.
Blanche foses fairly well, but she is not to be compared
with Lyda. I wish I could give some notion of Lyda’s
eyes; they have the strangest half-human expression, as if
there were half a soul behind them. Her master says that
she looks at him with an intensity that is quite painful
when she is trying with all her might to understand what
he wishes her to learn. I declare that this creature’s looks
are enough to frighten you if you dwell upon them, it
seems as if some unhappy child-soul had been imprisoned
in that canine shape. Are these poor dogs happy in their
strange, unnatural life? They are tenderly cared for, and
their master says that whoever beats a dog gives evidence
of his own personal stupidity, for a dog always tries his best
to understand, and you can make things clearest to him by
gentle teaching if you know how to teach at all.

IV. CATS.

One evening before dinner-time the present writer had
occasion to go into a dining-room where the cloth was
already laid, the glasses all in their places on the sideboard
and table, and the lamp and candles lighted. A cat,
which was a favourite in the house, finding the door ajar,
entered softly after me, and began to make a little explora-
tion after his manner. I have a fancy for watching
animals when they think they are not observed, so I
affected to be entirely absorbed in the occupation which
detained me there, but took note of the cat’s proceedings
without in any way interrupting them. The first thing he
did was to jump upon a chair, and thence upon the side-
board. There was a good deal of glass and plate upon
that piece of furniture, but nothing as yet which, in the
cat’s opinion, was worth purloining : so he brought all his
paws together on the very edge of the board, the two fore-
paws in the middle, the others on both sides, and sat
balancing himself in that attitude for a minute or two,
whilst he contemplated the long glittering vista of the
table. As yet there was not an atom of anything eatable
upon it, but the cat probably thought he might as well as-
certain whether this were so or not by a closer inspection,
for with a single spring he cleared the abyss and alighted
noiselessly on the table-cloth. He walked all over it and
left no trace; he passed amongst the slender glasses, frag-
ile-stemmed, like air-bubbles cut in half and balanced on
spears of ice; yet he disturbed nothing, broke nothing,

39

A FASCINATING TALE.

Pen drawing by E. H. Saunders, after Madame Ronner.

Cats. 41

anywhere. When his inspection was. over he slipped out
of sight, having been perfectly inaudible from the begin-
ning, so that a blind person could only have suspected his
visit by that mysterious sense which makes the blind aware
of the presence of another creature.

This little scene reveals one remarkable characteristic of
the feline nature, the innate and exquisite refinement of its
behaviour. It would be infinitely difficult, probably even
impossible, to communicate a delicacy of this kind to any
animal by teaching. The cat is a creature of most refined
and subtle perceptions naturally. Why should she tread
so carefully? It is not from fear of offending her master
and incurring punishment, but because to do so is in con-
formity with her own ideal of behaviour; exactly as a lady
would feel vexed with herself if she broke anything in her
own drawing-room, though no one would blame her ma/-
adresse (awkwardness), and she would never feel the loss.

‘The contrast in this respect between cats and other ani-
mals is very striking. I will not wrong the noble canine
nature so far as to say that it has no delicacy, but its deli-
cacy is not of this kind, not in actual touch, as the cat’s is.
The motions of the cat, being always governed by the most
refined sense of touch in the animal world, are typical in
quite a perfect way of what we call tact in the human
world. And as a man who has tact exercises it on all
occasions for his own satisfaction, even when there is no
positive need for it, so a cat will walk daintily and ob-
servantly everywhere, whether amongst the glasses on a
dinner-table or the rubbish in a farm-yard.

It is easy to detract from the admirableness of this
delicate quality in the cat by a reference to the neces-
sities of her life in a wild state. Any one not much dis-
posed to enter into imaginative sentimentalities about

42 Chapters on Animals.

animals might say to us, “‘ What you admire so much as
a proof of ladylike civilisation in the cat, is rather an
evidence that she has retained her savage habits. When
she so carefully avoids the glasses on the dinner-table
she is not thinking of her behaviour as a dependent on
civilised man, but acting in obedience to hereditary habits
of caution in the stealthy chase, which is the natural
accomplishment of her species. She will stir no branch
of a shrub lest her fated bird escape her, and her feet
are noiseless that the mouse may not know of her com-
ing.” This, no doubt, would be a probable account of
the origin of that fineness of touch and movement which
belongs to cats, but the fact of that fineness remains. In
all the domestic animals, and in man himself, there are
instincts and qualities still more or less distinctly traceable
to a savage state, and these qualities are often the very
basis of civilisation itself. That which in the wild cat is
but the stealthy cunning of the hunter, is refined in the
tame one into a habitual gentleness, often very agreeable
to ladies, who dislike the boisterous demonstrations of the
dog and his incorrigible carelessness.

This quality of extreme caution, which makes the cat
avoid obstacles that a dog would dash through without a
thought, makes her at the same time somewhat reserved
and suspicious in all the relations of her life. If a cat has
been allowed to run half wild this suspicion can never be
overcome. There was a numerous population of cats in
this half-wild state for some years in the garrets of my
house. Some of these were exceedingly fine, handsome
animals, and I very much wished to get them into the
rooms we inhabited, and so domesticate them; but all my
blandishments were useless. The nearest approach to
success was in the case of a superb white-and-black ani-

Cats. 43

mal, who, at last, would come to me occasionally, and
permit me to caress his head, because I scratched him
behind the ears. Encouraged by this measure of con-
fidence, I went so far on one occasion as to lift him a few
inches from the ground; on which he behaved himself
very much like a wild cat just trapped in the woods, and

WILD CaT.
Pen drawing by D. Munro, after the etching by Karl Bodmer.

for some days after it was impossible even to get near
him. He never came down-stairs in a regular way, but
communicated with the outer world by means of roofs and
trees, like the other untameable creatures in the garrets.
On returning home after an absence I sought him vainly,
and have never encountered him since.

This individual lived on the confines of civilisation, and
it is possible that his tendency to friendliness might have

44 Chapters on Animals.

been developed into a feeling more completely trustful by
greater delicacy and care. I happened to mention him to
an hotel-keeper who was unusually fond of animals, and
unusually successful in winning their affections. He told
me that his own cats were remarkable for their uncommon
tameness, being very much petted and caressed, and con-
stantly in the habit of seeing numbers of people who came
to the hotel, and he advised me to try a kitten of his
breed. This kitten, from hereditary civilisation, behaved
with the utmost confidence from the beginning, and, with
the exception of occasional absences for his own purposes,
has lived with me regularly enough. In winter he gen-
erally sleeps upon my dog, who submits in patience; and
I have often found him on horseback in the stable, not
from any taste for equestrianism, but simply because a
horse-cloth is a perpetual warmer when there is a living
horse beneath it.

All who have written upon cats are unanimous in the
opinion that their caressing ways bear reference simply to
themselves. My cat loves the dog and horse exactly with
the tender sentiment we have for foot-warmers and railway
rugs during a journey in the depth of winter, nor have I
ever been able to detect any worthier feeling towards his
master. Ladies are often fond of cats, and pleasantly
encourage the illusion that they are affectionate; it is said
too that very intellectual men have often a liking for the
same animal. In both these cases the attachment seems
to be due more to certain other qualities of the cat than
to any strength of sentiment on his part. Of all animals
that we can have in a room with us, the cat is the least
disturbing. Dogs bring so much dirt into houses that
many ladies have a positive horror of them; squirrels leap
about in a manner highly dangerous to the ornaments of a

Cats. 45

drawing-room; whilst monkeys are so incorrigibly mis-
chievous that it is impossible to tolerate them, notwith-
standing the nearness of the relationship. But you may
have a cat in the room with you without anxiety about any-
thing except eatables. He will rob a dish if he can get at
it, but he will not, except by the rarest of accidents, dis-
place a sheet of paper or upset an inkstand. The presence
of a cat is positively soothing to a student, as the presence
of a quiet nurse is soothing to the irritability of an invalid.
It is agreeable to feel that you are not absolutely alone, and
it seems to you, as you work, as if the cat took care that
all her movements should be noiseless, purely out of con-
sideration for your comfort. Then, if you have time to
caress her, you know that there will be purring responses,
and why inquire too closely into the sincerity of her grati-
tude ? There have been instances of people who surrounded
themselves with cats ; old maids have this fancy sometimes,
which is intelligible, because old maids delight in having
objects on which to lavish their inexhaustible kindness, and
their love of neatness and comfort is in harmony with the
neat habits of these comfort-appreciating creatures. A dog
on velvet is evidently out of place, he would be as happy
on clean straw, but a cat on velvet does not awaken any
sense of the incongruous. Itis more difficult to understand
how men of business ever take to cats. A well-known
French politician, who certainly betrayed nothing feminine
in his speeches, was so fond of cats that it was impossible
to dine peaceably at his house on account of four licensed
feline marauders which promenaded upon the dinner-table,
helping themselves to everything, and jumping about the
shoulders of the guests. It may be observed that in Paris
cats frequently appear upon the table in another shape.
I once stayed in a house not very far from the great tri-

46 Chapters on Animals.

umphal arch; and from my window, at certain hours of
the day, might be observed a purveyor of dead cats who
supplied a small cheap restaurant in a back street. I
never went to eat at the restaurant, but ascertained that it
had a certain reputation for a dish supposed to be made of
rabbits. During the great siege, many Parisians who may
frequently have eaten cat without knowing it (as you also
may perchance have done, respected reader) came to eat
cat with clear knowledge of the true nature of the feast,
and they all seemed to agree that it was very good. Our
prejudices about the flesh we use for food are often incon-
sistent, the most reasonable one seems to be a preference
for vegetable feeders, yet we eat lobsters and pike. The
truth is that nobody who eats even duck can consistently
have a horror of cat’s flesh on the ground of the animal’s
habits. And although the cat is a carnivorous animal,
it has a passionate fondness for certain vegetable
substances, delighting in the odour of valerian, and in the
taste of asparagus, the former to ecstasy, the latter to
downright gluttony.

Since artists cannot conveniently have lions and tigers
in their studios, they sometimes like to have cats merely
that they may watch the ineffable grace of their motions.
Stealthy and treacherous as they are, they have yet a quite
peculiar finish of style in action, far surpassing in certain
qualities of manner the most perfectly-trained action of
horses, or even the grace of the roe-deer or the gazelle.
All other animals are stiff in comparison with the felines,
all other animals have distinctly bodies supported by legs,
reminding one of the primitive toy-maker’s conception of
a quadruped, a cylinder on four sticks, with a neck and
head at one end anda tail at the other. But the cat no

The triumphal arch in Paris, is at the end of the Champs Elysées,

Cats: 47

more recalls this rude anatomy than does a serpent. From
the tips of his whiskers to the extremities of tail and claws
he is so much living india-rubber. One never thinks of mus-
cles and bones whilst looking at him (as he any muscles and
bones ?), but only of the reserved electric life that lies wait-

+

NWA
i YA

WYP : ik
WI sk ee ae
ee Zp, Mbt, & SB

CAT AND SERPENT.
Pen drawing by D, Munro, after Karl Bodmer.

ing under the softness of the fur. What bursts of energy
the creature is capable of! I once shut up a half-wild cat
in a room and he flew about like'a frightened bird, or like
leaves caught in a whirlwind. He dashed against the
window-panes like sudden hail, ran up the walls like ar-
rested water, and flung himself everywhere with such
rapidity, that he filled as much space, and filled it almost
as dangerously, as twenty flashing swords. And yet this

48 Chapters on Animals.

incredibly wild energy is in the creature’s quiet habits sub-
dued with an exquisite moderation. The cat always uses
precisely the necessary force, other animals roughly employ
what strength they happen to possess without reference to
the small occasion. One day I watched a young cat play-
ing with a daffodil. She sat on her hind-legs and patted
the flower with her paws, first with one paw and then with
the other, making the light yellow bell sway from side to
side, yet not injuring a petal or a stamen. She took a
delight, evidently, in the very delicacy of the exercise,
whereas a dog or a horse has no enjoyment of delicacy in
his own movements, but acts strongly when he is strong,
without calculating whether the force used may not be in
great part superfluous. This proportioning of the force to
the need is well known to be one of the evidences of refined
culture, both in manners and in the fine arts. If animals
could speak as fabulists have feigned, the dog would bea
blunt, blundering, out-spoken, honest fellow, but the cat
would have the rare talent of never saying a word too much.
A hint of the same character is conveyed by the sheathing
of the claws, and also by the contractability of the pupil of
the eye. The hostile claws are invisible, and are not shown
when they are wanted, yet are ever sharp andready. The
eye has a narrow pupil in broad daylight, receiving no
more sunshine than is agreeable, but it will gradually ex-
pand as twilight falls, and clear vision needs a larger and
larger surface. Some of these cat-qualities are very desir-
able in criticism. The claws of a critic ought to be very
sharp, but not perpetually prominent, and his eye ought to
see far into rather obscure subjects without being dazzled
by plain daylight.

It is odd that, notwithstanding the extreme beauty of
cats, their elegance of motion, the variety and intensity of

Cats. 49

their colour, they should be so little painted by consider-
able artists. Almost all the pictures of cats which I
remember were done by inferior men, often by artists of
a very low grade indeed. The reason for this is probably,
that although the cat is a refined and very voluptuous ani-
mal, it is so wanting in the nobler qualities as to fail in
winning the serious sympathies of noble and generous-
hearted men.

Mr. Manet once very appropriately introduced a black
cat on the bed of a Parisian lorette, and this cat became
quite famous for a week or two in all the Parisian news-
papers, being also cleverly copied by the caricaturists. No
other painted cat ever attracted so much attention, indeed
“Le chat de M. Manet” amused Paris as Athens amused
itself with the dog of Alcibiades.

M. Manet’s cat had an awful look, and depths of mean-
ing were discoverable in its eyes of yellow flame set in the
blackness of the night. There has always been a feeling
that a black cat was not altogether “canny.” Many of us,
if we were quite sincere, would confess to a superstition
about black cats. They seem to know too much, and is it
not written that their ancestors were the companions and
accomplices of witches in the times of old? Who can tell
what baleful secrets may not have been transmitted through
their generations? There can be no doubt that cats know
a great deal more than they choose to tell us, though occa-
sionally they may let a secret out in some unguarded
moment. Shelley the poet, who had an intense sense of
the supernatural, narrates the following history, as he
heard it from Mr. G. Lewis :—

M. Manet, a famous French painter.

The Black Cat; see the tale by Edgar Allan Poe.
The dog of Alcibiades; see Plutarch’s Life,

E

50 Chapters on Animals.

“ A gentleman on a visit to a friend who lived on the skirts of an
extensive forest on the east of Germany lost his way. He wandered
for some hours among the trees, when he saw a light at a distance.
On approaching it, he was surprised to observe that it proceeded from
the interior of a ruined monastery. Before he knocked, he thought it
prudent to look through the window. He saw a multitude of cats
assembled round a small grave, four of whom were letting down a
coffin with a crown upon it. The gentleman, startled at this unusual
sight, and imagining that he had arrived among the retreats of fiends
or witches, mounted his horse and rode away with the utmost precipi-
tation. He arrived at his friend’s house at a late hour, who had sat up
for him. On his arrival, his friend questioned as to the cause of the
traces of trouble visible on his face. He began to recount his adven-
ture after much difficulty, knowing that it was scarcely possible that his
friends should give faith to his relation. No sooner had he mentioned
the coffin with the crown upon it, than his friend’s cat, who seemed
to have been lying asleep before the fire, leaped up, saying, ‘Then I
am the King of the Cats!’ and scrambled up the chimney and was
seen no more.”

Now, is not that a remarkable story, proving, at the
same time, the attention cats pay to human conversation
even when they outwardly seem perfectly indifferent to
it, and the monarchical character of their political organ-
ization, which without this incident might have remained
forever unknown to us? This happened, we are told, in
eastern Germany; but in our own island, less than a hun-
dred years ago, there remained at least one cat fit to be
the ministrant of a sorceress. When Sir Walter Scott
visited the Black Dwarf, “Bowed Davie Ritchie,” the
Dwarf said, ‘Man hae ye ony poor?’ meaning power of
a supernatural kind, and he added solemnly, pointing to a
large black cat whose fiery eyes shone in a dark corner
of the cottage, “HE has poor!’ In Scott’s place any
imaginative person would have more than half believed
Davie, as indeed did his illustrious visitor. The ancient

Cats. Si

Egyptians, who knew as much about magic as the wisest
of the moderns, certainly believed that the cat had poor,
or they would not have mummified him with such pains-
taking conscientiousness. It may easily be imagined,
that in times when science did not exist, a creature whose
fur emitted lightnings when anybody rubbed it in the
dark, must have inspired great awe, and there is really
an air of mystery about cats which considerably exercises
the imagination. This impression would be intensified
in the case of people born with a physical antipathy to
cats, and there are such persons. A Captain Logan, of
Knockshinnock in Ayrshire, is mentioned in one of the
early numbers of Chaméers’ Journal as having this antip-
athy in the strongest form. He simply could not endure
the sight of cat or kitten, and though a tall, strong man,
would do anything to escape from the objects of his
instinctive and uncontrollable horror, climbing upon chairs
if a cat entered the room, and not daring to come down
till the creature was removed from his presence. These
mysterious repugnances are outside the domain of reason.
Many people, not without courage, are seized with involun-
tary shudderings when they see a snake or a toad; others
could not bring themselves to touch a rat, though the rat
is one of the cleanliest of animals — not, certainly, as to
his food, but his person. It may be presumed that one
Mrs. Griggs, who lived, I believe, in Edinburgh, did not
share Captain Logan’s antipathy, for she kept in her
house no less than eighty-six living cats, and had, besides,
twenty-eight dead ones in glass cases, immortalized by the
art of the taxidermist. If it is true, and it certainly is so in
a great measure, that those who love most know most,
then Mrs. Griggs would have been a much more com-
petent person to write on cats than the cold-minded author

62 Chapters on Animals.

of these chapters. It is wonderful to think how much
that good lady must have known of the doveableness of
cats, of those recondite qualities which may endear them
to the human heart!

What a difference in knowledge and feeling concerning
cats between Mrs. Griggs and a gamekeeper! The game-
keeper knows a good dea] about them too, but it is not
exactly affection which has given keenness to /vzs obser-
vation. He does not see a “dear sweet pet” in every cat
that crosses his woodland path, but the most destructive
of poachers, the worst of “vermin.” And there can be
no doubt that from his point of view the gamekeeper is
quite right, even as good Mrs. Griggs may have been from
hers. If cats killed game from hunger only, there would
be a limit to their depredations, but unfortunately they
have the instinct of sport, which sportsmen consider a
very admirable quality in themselves, but regard with the
strongest disapprobation in other animals. Mr. Frank
Buckland says, that when once a cat has acquired the
passion for hunting it becomes so strong that it is impos-
sible to break him of it. He knew a cat which had been
condemned to death, but the owner begged its life on con-
dition that it should be shut up every night and well fed.
The very first night of its incarceration it escaped up the
chimney, and was found the next morning, black with
soot, in one of the gamekeeper’s traps. The keeper
easily determines what kind of animal has been committing
depredations in his absence. ‘‘ Every animal has his own
way of killing and eating his prey. The cat always turns
the skin zvszde out, leaving the same reversed like a glove.
The weasel and stoat will eat the brain and nibble about
the head, and suck the blood. The fox will always leave
the legs and hinder parts of a hare or a rabbit; the dog

Cats. £4

tears his prey to pieces, and eats it ‘anyhow —all over
the place’; the crows and magpies always peck at the
eyes before they touch any part of the body.”

“ Again,” continues Mr. Frank Buckland, “let the
believer in the innocence of Mrs. Puss listen to the crow
of the startled pheasant; he will hear him ‘tree,’ as the
keeper calls it, and from his safe perch up in a branch
again crow as if to summon his protector to his aid. No
second summons does the keeper want; he at once runs
to the spot, and there, stealing with erect ears, glaring
eyes, and limbs collected together, and at a high state of
tension, ready for the fatal spring, he sees — what ? — the
cat, of course, caught in the very attitude of premeditated
poaching.” ...

Of the cat in a state of nature few of us have seen very
much. The wild cat has become rare in the British islands,
but the specimens shot occasionally by gamekeepers are
very superior in size and strength to the familiar occupant
of the hearth-rug. JI remember that when I lived at Loch
Awe, my next neighbour, a keeper on the Cladich estate,
shot one that quite astonished me—a formidable beast
indeed, to which the largest domestic cat was as an ordi-
nary human being to Chang the giant —indeed this com-
parison is insufficient. Wild cats are not usually dangerous
to man, for they prudently avoid him, but if such a creature
as that killed on Lochaweside were to show fight, an unarmed
man would find the situation very perilous. I would much
rather have to fight a wolf. There is a tradition at the vil-
lage of Barnborough, in Yorkshire, that a man and a wild
cat fought together in a wood near there, and that the
combat went on till they got to the church-porch, when

Chang was a famous Chinese giant who travelled all over the world exhibit-
ing himself.

Vs

ws \ a
a Ny)
Ae. Ze

THE KING OF THE BEASTS.

Pen drawing by E. H. Saunders, after Ernest van Muyden.

Cats. 55

both died from their wounds. It is the marvellous agility
of the cat which makes him such a terrible enemy; to say
that he “flies” at you is scarcely a figure of speech. How-
ever, the wild cat, when he knows that he is observed,
generally seeks refuge, as King Charles did at Boscobel,
in the leafy shelter of some shadowy tree, and there the
deadly leaden hail too surely follows him, and brings him
to earth again.

Cats have the advantage of being very highly connected,
since the king of beasts is their blood-relation, and it is
certain that a good deal of the interest we take in them is
due to this august relationship. What the merlin or the
sparrow-hawk is to the golden eagle, the cat is to the great
felines of the tropics. The difference between a domestic
cat and a tiger is scarcely wider than that which separates
a miniature pet dog from a bloodhound. It is becoming
to the dignity of an African prince, like Theodore of Abys-
sinia, to have lions for his household pets. The true
grandeur and majesty of a brave man are rarely seen in
such visible supremacy as when he sits surrounded by
these terrible creatures, he in his fearlessness, they in
their awe; he in his defenceless weakness, they with that
mighty strength which they dare not use against him.
One of my friends, distinguished alike in literature and
science, but not at all the sort of person, apparently, to
command respect from brutes who cannot estimate intel-
lectual greatness, had one day an interesting conversation
with a lion-tamer, which ended in a still more interesting
experiment. The lion-tamer affirmed that there was no
secret in his profession, that rea/ courage alone was neces-

The story of the escape of King Charles II. of England is told in Sir
W. Scott’s “Woodstock” ; and in Harrison Ainsworth’s “Boscobel or the

Royal Oak.”

56 Chapters on Animals.

sary, and that any one who had the genuine gift of courage
could safely enter the cage along with him. “ For example,
you yourself, sir,” added the lion-tamer, “if you have the
sort of courage I mean, may go into the cage with me
whenever you like.” On this my friend, who has a fine
intellectual coolness and unbounded scientific curiosity,
willingly accepted the offer, and paid a visit to their
majesties the lions in the privacy of their own apartment.
They received him with the politeness due to a brave man,
and after an agreeable interview of several minutes he
backed out of the royal presence with the gratified feel-
ings of a gentleman who has just been presented at court.

BENGAL TIGER,
Pen drawing by E. H. Saunders, after Ernest van Muyden.

COMING FROM THE FAIR.
Pen drawing by E. H. Saunders, after the painting by Rosa Bonheur.

V. HORSES.

Ir happened to me one night during the Franco-Prussian
war to ride into the court-yard of an inn which was full of
French artillerymen. In the bustle and hurry of the time
it was useless to cal] for the services of an ostler, so I set
about seeking for stable-room myself. In the French
country inns there are no stalls, and the only division
between the horses, when there is any separation at all, is
a board suspended at one end by an iron hook to the
manger, and at the other hanging from the roof by a
knotted cord. In this inn, however, even the hanging-
board was wanting, and about fifty artillery horses were
huddled together so closely as almost to touch each other,
so that it was difficult to find an open space for my mare.
At last I found an opening near a magnificent black ani-
mal, which I supposed to be an officer’s saddle-horse.

A fine horse is always an attraction for me, so as soon
as I had finished such arrangements as were possible for
the comfort of my own beast, I began to examine her
neighbour rather minutely. He seemed in perfect health,

37

58 Chapters on Animals.

but at last I discovered a fresh wound on the near foreleg,
evidently caused by a fragment of a shell. (There had
been a battle at the place the day before.) Turning to an
artilleryman who was standing by, I asked if the veterinary
surgeon thought he could save the horse. “No, sir, he is
to be shot to-morrow morning.” This decision seemed.
hard, for the horse stood well, and was eating his hay
tranquilly. I felt strongly tempted to beg him, and see
what rest and care could accomplish.

At midnight I came back for my own mare. There
was a great and terrible change in her neighbour’s con-
dition. He lay in the straw, half under her, the place was
so crowded. I shall never forget his piteous cries and
moans. He could not rise, and the shattered limb was
causing him cruel pain. His noble head lay at my feet,
and I stooped to caress it.

“So this is the reward,’ I thought, ‘that man gives to
the best and bravest servant that he has! A long night
of intolerable anguish, unrelieved by any attempt what-
ever to soothe or ease his pain; in the morning, the de-
layed charity of a rifle-bullet!” This single instance,
which moved me because I had seen it, perhaps a little
also because the animal was beautiful and gentle, what
was it, after all, in comparison with the incalculable
quantity of animal suffering which the war was causing in
half the provinces of France? These reflections filled me
with pain and sadness as I rode over the battle-ground in
the frosty moonlight. The dead horses lay there still,
just as they fell, and for them I felt no pity. Swift death,
sudden oblivion, rest absolute, unconscious, ‘eternal, these
are not evils; but the pain of the torn flesh and the shat-
tered bone, the long agony in hunger and cold, the anguish
of the poor maimed brutes, who struggle through the last

Horses. 59

dark passages of existence, without either the pride of the
soldier, the reason of the philosopher, or the hope of the
Christian — that is Evil, pure and unmixed!

Like all who love animals much, I know and remember
them as I know and remember men. During the war I
had acquaintances amongst the officers and soldiers, and
acquaintances amongst their horses likewise; and when
they rode forth to battle I was pretty nearly as anxious
about the animals as about the brave men who mounted
them. I remember a Garibaldian sergeant, whose red
shirt was frequently visible in my court-yard, a youth over-
flowing with life, to whom the excitement of a battle from
time to time was as necessary as that of a ball is toa lively
young lady. His way of riding was the nearest approach
to that of an enraptured bard on Pegasus that I ever
witnessed amongst the realities of the earth. My house
is situated something like a tower, with views in every
direction, and I used to amuse myself with watching him
from the upper windows when the fit of equestrian
inspiration was upon him. The red shirt flew first along
the high-road, then dashed suddenly down a lane; a little
later you could see it flashing scarlet along the outskirts of
a distant wood; then, after a brief eclipse, it reappeared in
the most unexpected places. The lad careered in this
way simply for his amusement, — for the pulsation of that
wild delight that his fiery nature needed. It is a fact that
he did not even hold the reins. When these mad fits of
equestrianism seized him, he flung the bridle on his
charger’s neck, threw his arms high in the air, and then
made them revolve like the paddle-wheels of a steamer.
He accompanied these gestures with wild Italian cries,
and a double stroke of the spurs. No wonder if his horse
galloped! And he aid gallop. When the rider wanted to

60 Chapters on Animals.

turn a lane he simply gave his steed a hearty slap on the
off-side of the neck, —a hint which never seemed to be
be misunderstood. I have witnessed a good deal of
remarkable equestrianism, but never anything like that.
His horse was one of the ugliest, and one of the best, that
soldier ever bestrode. I have a faint recollection of seeing
a child’s wooden horse which so closely resembled it, that
the artist must have had some such model in his mind.
A great round barrel, that seemed as if it had been turned
ina lathe, a broad chest, straight strong legs very short
proportionally, shoulders far forward relatively to the neck,
high withers, large ugly head, with a good-tempered
expression, a stump for a tail, and a rough coat of a bay
quite closely resembling red hair in the human species:
such were the various beauties of this war-horse. His
ugliness and his honest looks gave me a sort of attachment
to him; and his rider loved him dearly, and was loud in
his praise. At length the regiment was ordered to Dijon,
and severely engaged there in the Battle of Paques.
Afterwards I saw the sergeant’s red shirt, but he rode no
longer that good animal. The poor thing had had three
of its four legs carried away by a cannon-ball; and its
master, though in the heat of the battle, humanely ended
its misery with his revolver.

These things, of course, are the every-day accidents of
war, in which horses are killed by thousands; but when
particular instances come under your observation, they
pain you, if you really love animals. I heartily wish that
horses could be dispensed with in war, and some sort of
steam-engine used instead, if it were possible. In the
orders given by Louis-Napoleon at the opening of the
campaign of 1870, one detail seemed to me unnecessarily
cruel. Orderlies were told not to hesitate to ride their

Horses. 61

horses to death (de crever leurs montures). It is certainly
necessary on occasion, when the fate of thousands depends
upon the speed of an animal, to avail ourselves of that
noble quality by which it will give its last breath in de-
voted obedience; but soldiers are not generally so tender
that they need to be encouraged in indiscriminate merci-
lessness. That glorious poem of Browning’s would be
intolerable to our humanity, were it not for the sweet
touches of mercy at the end:—

“ By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, ‘Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault’s not in her,
We'll remember at Aix’ — for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck, and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

So we were left galloping, Joris and I,

Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky ;

The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,

*’Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble, like chaff;
Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,

And ‘Gallop,’ said Joris, ‘for Aix is in sight !”

‘How they'll greet us !’—and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone ;

And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight

Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets’ rin.”

All this is very terrible, and would be almost in the
spirit of the Imperial command to the orderlies to crever
leurs montures ; were it not that the very strength of the

For intense power of literary workmanship I know nothing in any lan-
guage, that goes beyond those four lines. The poem is entitled, “ How They
brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.”

crever leurs montures. “ Ride their horses to death.”

62 Chapters on Animals.

description shows how much the poet felt for the suffering
animals, though he expresses no sympathy directly. But
the tenderness of the man capable of loving a good horse
is reserved entirely for the last two stanzas, where it is
expressed in the manliest way, yet in a way so affecting
that no noble-minded person who read the poem aloud
could get through those last stanzas, when he came to
them, without some huskiness of emotion in the voice,
and, perhaps, just a little mistiness in the eyes.

“Then I cast loose my buff coat, each holster let fall,
Shook off my gack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
Called my Roland his pet-name, uty horse without a peer ;
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is, friends flocking round,

And I sat with his head ‘twixt my knees, on the ground ;

And no voice but was pratsing this Roland of mine,

As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,

Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)

Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.”

This is the ideal of the relation between man and horse,
—the horse serving man to his utmost, lending him his
swiftness with a perfect good will,—the man accepting
the service for a noble purpose, doing all he can to make
the work lighter for his servant, and at last, when the
great effort is over, caring for him as tenderly and anx-
iously as if he were a brother or a son. This is the ideal,
but the reality too often falls short of it on both sides.
There does not exist in the minds of owners of horses
generally that touch of romantic sentiment which trans-
lates itself in affectionate companionship and tender care.
The horse is a valuable animal, and is, on the whole, looked

Horses. 63

after fairly well, his health is cared for, he is usually well
fed, and horses used for private purposes are seldom over-
worked. But there is a remarkable absence of sentiment
in all this, which is proved by the facility with which, in
most European countries, men sell their horses, often for
bodily infirmities or imperfections, in which there is no
question of temper, and especially by the custom of selling
a horse which has done faithful service, merely because
he is getting old and weaker than when in his prime.
This last custom proves the absence of sentiment, the
more completely that every one knows when selling an
old horse that he is dooming him to harder work and
worse keep, and that the certain fate of a horse which
we part with because he is old, is a descent to harder and
harder conditions, till finally he is worked to death in a
cab, or in a cart belonging to some master little less mis-
erable than himself.

The whole subject of the relation between the horse
and his master depends upon the customs which regulate
our life, and which have regulated the lives of our fore-
fathers, in all sorts of other ways. We are not enough
with our horses to educate either their intelligence or their
affections; and as there has been the same separation in
preceding centuries, the horse has inherited a way of
regarding men which scarcely tends to make their rela-
tion more intimate. There are a few exceptional cases
in which traces of affection are distinctly perceptible in
horses, but by far the greater number of them are either
indifferent, or decidedly hostile to humanity. Man loves
the horse, at least some men love him, from feelings of
gratitude and pride. When your horse has carried you
well in battle, or on the hunting-field, you are grateful to
him for the exercise of his strength and courage in your

64 Chapters on Animals.

service; when he has borne you majestically on some
occasion of state, or enabled you to display the grace, and
skill, and the manly beauty of your person, before the
admiring eyes of ladies, you are proud of him as a statue,
if it could feel, would be proud of the magnificence of its
pedestal. The saddle is a sort of throne for man: when
seated there, he has under him the noblest of all the brutes,
so that he may be said to sit enthroned above the whole
animal creation. It is from a feeling of the royalty of that
position, that kings, if they are good riders, always prefer
to enter a city on horseback, when a great effect is to be
produced upon the minds of the people, well knowing that
a leathern saddle, simple and hard as it is, has more of
royal dignity than the silken cushions of the gilded coach
of state. An incident occurred lately on the entry of King
Amadeus into Lerida, which showed him, as by an acted
simile, in the character of a sovereign whose throne is not
stable, yet whose hand is firm. A shower of flowers rained
from a triumphal arch as the Savoyard king rode under it,
and his charger plunged so violently that no one but a
thorough horseman could have kept his place. All the
peoples of the earth like their kings to be fine horsemen,
and the crowd thought that in his tossing saddle Amadeus
came royally into Lerida!

Our pride in horses, our admiration of their beauty and
their strength, produce in us a certain feeling of attach-
ment to them, but rarely a deep affection. The trouble of
attending to the wants of horses, of grooming and feeding
them at stated times, can rarely be undertaken by the
owner himself, and would be a perpetual annoyance to
him unless he had a most exceptional liking for the ani-
mal, so as to be always happy when about the stable... .
It is a trouble to most men to be even obliged to exercise

Horses. 65

a horse quite regularly, a rich man likes to have horses at
his door when he wants them, but to have no trouble about
them at other times, using them as living velocipedes, and
thinking no more about them in the intervals than if they
were made of well-painted iron. Hence, there comes a
personage between the horse and his master, who feeds,
cleans, gently exercises the animal, and is seen and heard
more frequently by him in the course of one week than
his owner is in a month. There are the long absences of
the owner also, when he is staying in other people’s houses,
or travelling, or at another residence of his where he has
other horses, or in his yacht where all horses whatever
would be much out of place. The owner, then, from the
horse’s point of view, is a man who makes his appearance
from time to time armed with a whip and a pair of spurs,
gets upon the horse’s back, compels him to trot, and gal-
lop, and jump hedges, and then suddenly disappears, it
may be for several weeks. The two lives are so widely
separated that there hardly can be any warm affection.
If the horse loves any one it is more likely to be the
groom than the master, but the groom has often disa-
greeable manners (to which horses are extremely sensi-
tive), and in some houses he is changed as frequently as
a French minister. On the whole, the horse very seldom
enjoys fair opportunities for attaching himself to any
human being... .

It would be highly interesting to watch the effect of a
continual association between the horse and his master, and
still more interesting if it could be kept up during several
generations. The powers of affection in the horse are for
the most part latent. We see faint signs of them, and
there is a general belief that the horse has such powers,
which is founded partly on some exceptional examples,

F

66 Chapters on Animals.

and partly on a subtle satisfaction in believing that we are
beloved by our slaves. But the plain truth is, that horses,
as they live usually in our service, have little to love us
for, and most commonly regard us either with indiffer-
ence or dislike. The slightest demonstration of attach-
ment wins us in a moment, and we exaggerate it because
it flatters our amour propre. When a horse neighs at our
coming, it is most commonly a request for corn, and some
of his other demonstrations are very equivocal. Some
men tell you when horses set their ears back, and
show the white of their eye, and try to bite, and kick at
them in the stable, that all these are merely signs of
playful affection. In short, there is a distinct passion in
man’s heart for which the Greeks had a name, but which
in England we call the love of horses, and this has its
illusions like every other passion.

When we come to the active vices, the hatred and rebel-
lion of the horse against his master express themselves
very plainly, much more plainly than equine affection
expresses itself ever. Many of these vices are hereditary
in the equine blood, are a tradition of ill-usage. The way
in which they burst forth in horses, apparently of the most
tranquil character, is one of the mysteries of nature.
Three instances have occurred in my own stable, of
animals becoming suddenly and irremediably vicious, pass-
ing in the course of three or four days from a state like
that of Paris under the Empire to the rage and rebellion
of Paris under the Commune, and neither in these cases,
nor in any other that has come under my observation, has
a real vice ever been permanently eradicated. Horses
become vicious from many causes; the most frequent, I
think, is idleness in combination with confinement and good

Amour propre, self esteem.

Horses. 67

keep. Out at grass a horse becomes wild rather than
vicious, and mere wildness is easily curable by gentleness
and patience. Tied up in a stable, with plenty of hay and
corn, his system accumulates the electricity of irritability
which ought to have been regularly expended in work, and
it explodes in dangerous violence. Four days’ idleness in

HORSES IN FREEDOM.
Pen drawing by D. Munro, after the etching by J. Veyrassat.

an inn-stable, during wet weather, cost me the most valu-
able horse I ever possessed. On the fifth day no man
could ride him, and no man was ever able to ride him
afterwards. A black Irish horse, who served me well
during a year, and was an excellent leaper, was suddenly
lost to me in the same way, and the same thing occurred
with a powerful Scotch Galloway. Most men who have

I begged the late Lord Hawke, who was the best rider, or one of the three

best, I ever knew, to make a trial of him, but the results were the same as with
myself and the rough-riders, and the verdict, “ Nothing to be made of him.”

68 Chapters on Animals.

had some experience of horses will have known such cases.
No form of disappointment is more provoking. The
animal, after vice has declared itself, seems exactly the
same creature that he did before. Has he not the same
limbs, shape, colour? Is not the spot of white upon his
forehead precisely in the same place? Is not his tail of
the same length? Nothing is altered that the eye may
detect, but there is the same change that there is in a wine-
bottle, when somebody has poured the wine out and re-
placed it with deadly poison. In the animal’s brain there
dwelt a spirit that was your most faithful servant — your
most humble and dutiful friend; that spirit is gone, and
instead of it there is a demon who is determined to kill
you whenever an opportunity offers. The Teutonic le-
gends of black steeds with fiery eyes that were possessed
by evil spirits, are no more than the poetical form that
clothes an indubitable truth. The nature of the horse is
such that he is capable of endless irreconcilable rage,
against his master, and against humanity, —a temper of
chronic hate and rebellion like that of Milton’s fallen
angels, keeping the fierce resolve —

“To wage by force or guile eternal war
Irreconcilable.”

When you see, however, the thousands upon thousands
of horses which do their duty, on the whole safely and
well, in the large cities, in the country, in the army, about
railway stations, breweries, and business places of all
kinds, you will conclude that the horse-demons are rare in
proportion ; and, indeed, happily they are so. Most horses
are fairly good, and in some races almost all of them are
docile. In other races vices of different kinds are very

Horses. 69

common. ‘Take the Corsican ponies, for instance, a hardy
little race of much speed and endurance, very useful to
drive in pairs in small phaetons; they are nearly always
vicious, though seldom vicious enough to interfere materi-
ally with their usefulness. A tiny pair were offered me
with a pretty carriage, the whole equipage suspiciously
cheap, but I discovered that one of the charming little

FLEMISH DRAY HORSE.
Drawn by D. Munro.

creatures would kick like the youthful Tommy Newcome
in Doyle’s sketch, and the other bit like a wolf. After-
wards I found that these accomplishments were common
to the Corsican breed; in fact, that they were generally as
energetic, but as wilful and difficult to deal with, as their
little human compatriot, Napoleon. On the other hand,
there are breeds where gentle tempers and amiable man-
ners are hereditary... .

70 Chapters on Animals.

The peaceful inhabitants of London have ideas about
cavalry horses which would be greatly modified by a week’s
experience of Continental warfare. The British army re-
quires few horses in comparison with the vast numbers
which are absorbed by the forces of Germany or France,
so that there is wider latitude for selection, and no horse
which has the honour of carrying a British soldier is ever
publicly seen in his native land without having everything
that can affect his appearance entirely in his favour. The
man who rides him, though apparently his master, is in re-
ality his servant, as every youth who enters the ranks of a
cavalry regiment discovers when his young illusions fade.
All the things which the animal has to carry are, by the
craft and taste of the equipment-makers, turned into so
many ornaments; and even when not positively beautiful
in themselves, are so devised as to enhance the martial ef-
fect, and make you feel that you are in the presence of a
war-horse. Bright steel and brass, in forms unused about
the saddlery of civilians; furs and saddle-cloths, the latter
decorated with lace round the edges, and perhaps even em-
broidery in the corners; a luxury of straps and chains, a
massiveness peculiarly military; all this strikes the civilian
imagination, and the battle-steed, even when not in him-
self a particularly perfect animal, has generally a noble
and imposing air. All his belongings are kept so clean
and bright that we respect him as a member of the ar-
istocracy of horses. He is brushed and groomed as if
he came from the stables of a prince. To these advan-
tages may be added that of his superior education, which
tells in every movement, and his pride, for he is proud
of all his superiorities, and the consciousness of them
gives grace to the curve of his neck, and fire to his eye,
and dignity to his disdainful stepping.

Horses. 71

These glories of the war-horse are to be seen in their
highest perfection in that prosperous and peaceful capi-

QUEEN'S LIFE GUARDSMAN,

tal of England where the thunder of an enemy’s cannon
has never yet been heard. The English household troops
are the ideal cavalry, good in service on the field of
serious conflict, but especially and peculiarly admirable

2 Chapters on Animals.

as a spectacle. I had almost written that the poetry of
warfare was to be best seen in a charge of the Life-guards
at a review, but there is a yet deeper poetry in some of
war’s realities where the element of beauty is not so con-
spicuously present. The boy’s ideal of the war-horse is
that coal-black, silken coated charger that bears the
helmeted cuirassier, and all those glittering arms and orna-
ments dazzle the imagination and fill the martial dreams of
youth. Well, it is very fine, very beautiful, and we like to
see the Royal Guards flashing past after the Court car-
riages ; but during the war between France and Germany
I saw another sight, and renounced the boy’s ideal.

The armies of Chanzy had been defeated on the Loire,
and their broken remnants passed as they could to join the
desperate enterprise of Bourbaki for the relief of Belfort.
In the depth of that terrible winter, the roads covered with
snow, with a bitter wind sweeping across the country from
the east, and every water-fall a pillar of massy ice, there
came two or three thousand horsemen from those disas-
trous battle-fields. Slowly they passed over the hills that
divide the eastern from the western rivers, an irregular
procession broken by great intervals, so that we always
thought no more were coming, yet others followed, strag-
gling in melancholy groups. What a contrast to the brill-
iance of areview! How different from the marching-past
when the Emperor sat in his embroidery on the Champ-de-
Mars and the glittering hosts swept before him, saluting
with polished swords! Ah, these horsemen came from
another and a bloodier field of Mars; they had been doing
the rough work of the war-god and bore the signs of it!
The brass of their helmets shone no more than the dull
leopard-skin beneath it, the lancers had poles without pen-
nons, the bits and stirrups were rusty, and the horses were

Horses. a5

encumbered with tins and pans for rude cookery, and bun-
dles of hay, and coarse coverings for the bitter bivouac.
Here and there a wearied brute was led slowly by a merciful
master; a few were still suffering from wounds, all were
meagre and overworked, not one had been groomed for
weeks. Yet here, I said, as the weary troops passed by,
and others like them loomed in gray masses as they ap-
proached through the falling snow, — here, and not on the
brilliant parade-ground, now in this busy harvest-time of
death, not then in the lightness of their leisure, are the bat-
tle-steeds most sublime! All the fopperies of soldiering
had been rubbed away by the rough hand of implacable
Necessity, but instead of them what a moving pathos!
what grandeur of patient endurance! Grotesque they all
were certainly, but it was a grotesqueness of that highest
kind which is infinitely and irresistibly affecting. The
women laughed at those sorry brutes, those meagre Rosi-
nantes, and at the wonderful odd figures that sat upon
them, like Quixotes in quilts, riding on the wildest of ex-
peditions to meet starvation under the dark Jura pine-
trees, — but whilst the women laughed the tears ran down
their cheeks. .. .

The conspicuous merit of the horse, which has given
him the dearly-paid honour of sharing in our wars, is his
capacity for being disciplined, — and a very great capacity
it is, a very noble gift indeed; nobler than much clever-
ness. Several animals are cleverer than the horse in the
way of intelligence; not one is so amenable to discipline.
He is not observant, except of places; not nearly so obser-
vant as half-a-dozen other animals we know. His eye never
fixes itself long in a penetrating gaze, like the mild, wistful

Rosinante, Don Quixote’s horse, “so lean, lank, meagre, drooping, sharp-
backed, and raw-boned as to excite much curiosity and mirth.”

74 Chapters on Animals.

watchfulness of the dog, or the steady flame of the lion’s
luminous orbs, but he can listen and obey, and his acts of
obedience pass easily by repetition into fixed habits, so that
you never have to teach him more than one thing at a time.
The way to educate a horse is to do as Franklin did in the
formation of his moral habits — that is, to aim at one per-
fection at once, and afterwards, when that has become easy
from practice, and formed itself into a habit, to try for
some other perfection. A good horse never forgets your
lessons. There are unteachable brutes which ought to be
handed over to rude masters and rough work, but every
horse of average intelligence and gentle temper may be
very highly educated indeed. Beyond this average degree
of teachableness there are exceptional cases— the horses
of genius; for genius (an exceptional vigour and intensity of
the mental faculties with correspondingly large powers of
acquisition) exists amongst the lower animals in due degree
as it does in the human species. A few animals of this
remarkable degree of endowment are picked up by the
proprietors of circuses, and so become known to the public,
but the probability is that a much larger proportion remain
in the obscurity of ordinary equine life, and that their gifts
escape attention.

Most of us have seen remarkable performances of trained
horses. The most remarkable that I ever saw were those
of that wonderful black gelding that Pablo Fanque used
to ride. There can be no doubt that he had pride and
delight in his own extraordinary intelligence and perfect
education, just as some great poet or painter may delight
in the richness of his gifts and the perfection of his work.
But the circus performance is not the ideal aim of equine
accomplishment. One would not care much to have a horse

Franklin's moral habits, see his autobiography, Chapter V.

Horses. VES

that would dance or fire a pistol, or pick up a pocket-hand-
kerchief, yet it would be pleasant to have in our horses the
degree of docility and intelligence which circus-trainers
direct to these vain objects. Many accomplishments might
be attained that would be valuable everywhere. It would
be extremely convenient if a horse would follow you with-
out being pulled by halter or bridle, and wait for you in
one place without being fastened. A man who had trav-
elled amongst the Arabs told me that he had seen many
horses that would stand where they were left, without any
fastening, and some will follow you like a dog.

A great deal of accomplishment may go into the ordi-
nary work of saddle and carriage-horses, and almost escape
notice because we think it only natural. But how wide
is the difference between a trained horse and a raw one!
How slight are the indications by which the master con-
veys the expression of his will, how rapid and exact the
apprehension! With horses of the finest organisation this
apprehension rises into a sympathy above the necessity for
any definite command; they know the master’s will by a
sense of faint pressures, of limb on saddle, of hand on rein.
I used to ride a horse which would go on trotting so long
as I was not tired, but when I began to feel fatigued he
walked, knowing by my altered manner of rising in the
saddle that rest would be a relief to me. By this accurate
interpretation of our muscular action, even when it is so
slight as to be imperceptible to the eye of a by-stander, the
horse measures the skill, the strength, the resolution of his
rider. He knows at once whether you are at home in the
saddle or not, and if your movements do not correspond
accurately to his own, he is aware that he can take liberties.
A bad rider may sometimes deceive the people in the street,
but it may be doubted whether he ever deceived the animal

76 Chapters on Animals.

under him. It is evident that a bad rider must be ex-
tremely disagreeable to a horse of refined feeling, disa-
greeable as an awkward partner in dancing is disagreeable.

The intelligence of horses is shown in nothing so much
as in their different behaviour under different men. When
a thorough horseman gets into the saddle the creature he
mounts is aware that there are the strongest reasons for
behaving. himself properly, and it is only the mad rebels
that resist. Not only can a good horseman overcome
opposition better than a bad one, but he has much less
opposition to overcome. The very best horsemen, amongst
gentlemen, are often scarcely even aware of the real diffi-
culties of riding, their horses obey them so well, and are so
perfectly suited to their work. An English lady who rides
admirably, told me that she did not deserve so much credit
as she got, because the excellence of her horses made rid-
ing quite easy for her, and she declared that even in her
boldest leaps the secowsse was not very violent. There is a
good deal of truth in this, which is often overlooked. The
relation between horse and rider is mutual, and each shows
the other to advantage.

Whilst on this subject of riding, let me express a regret
that good horsemanship is becoming rarer and rarer in
proportion to the numbers of the population. The excel-
lence of modern roads, which has led to the universal em-
ployment of wheeled carriages, and the introduction of
railways, which are now used by all classes for long or
rapid journeys, have together reduced horsemanship, in the
case of civilians, to the rank of a mere amusement, or an
exercise for the benefit of health. In fact, it is coming to
this, that nobody but rich men and their grooms will know
how to ride on horseback ; whereas in former generations,

secousse, Shock.

Horses. 79

when the bad roads reduced all travelling to an alternative
between riding and pedestrianism, men of all degrees and
conditions went on horseback for considerable distances,
and became skilful, no doubt, in proportion to the fre-
quency of their practice. What a great deal of riding there
is in the Waverley novels! Not only the baron and the
knight, but also the tradesman, the commercial traveller,
the citizen of every rank, go on horseback from place to
place. How much healthy and invigorating exercise the
men of our generation miss which their forefathers fre-
quently enjoyed!

Imagine the benefit to a manly youth of the last cen-
tury, fastened in London behind a counter or a desk,
when he was ordered to ride on business to Lincoln, or
York, or Edinburgh! He had before him weeks of the
manliest life a human being can lead, and plenty of leisure,
as he sat in the saddle, for the observation of men and
nature. There was danger enough to give exercise to his
courage; and as the pistols in his holsters were loaded
with powder and ball, so the heart in his breast had to be
charged with the spirit of the brave. All men in those
days lived from time to time a life giving them some
brotherhood with the knights of the days of chivalry. A
London tradesman riding over the dark heath, robber-
haunted, thinking about the flints of his big pistols, had
need of a portion of that manliness which in other times
had clothed itself in knightly harness of complete steel.
Consider the difference between passing a fortnight on
horseback and a night in a railway train — the long breath-
ing of fresh air, the healthy exercise, the delightful variety
of scenery, the entertaining change and adventure; and
then the seat in the railway carriage, with its poisonously
impure atmosphere... .

78 Chapters on Animals.

Railway travelling is fatiguing, yet it is not exercise.
It wears the nervous system, but does not help the circu-
lation of the blood. Horse exercise produces effects of
an exactly opposite nature, it stimulates and improves the
circulation, and reposes the nervous system better than any-
thing except swimming. Our forefathers found in travel
a double corrective for the evils of a sedentary life, and
they had the additional advantage of not being able to go
far without spending a good deal of time upon the road
—days and weeks —during which the system had full
leisure to recruit itself. Too many of them were sense-
lessly careless about health ; they ate and drank a great
deal more than can have been good for them, and the
more robust had little notion of moderation in anything:
yet they certainly knew less of nervous ailments than does
our own more thoughtful and scientific generation. Their
bad roads gave them exercise, as their badly-fitted doors
and windows ensured them an efficient ventilation. We
may still imitate them in equestrian tours; but it is not
quite the same thing, because we only travel in this way
for pleasure, that is, when we take a holiday, whereas they
did it from necessity, at all seasons and in all weathers.

I read the other day, in a book written for students, that
walking, and not riding, is the best exercise; and I knew a
physician who said he only recommended horse exercise
because his patients preferred it. On this point it may be
observed, that no one is likely to get much good in the
saddle unless he has the true equestrian instinct, which is
as much a gift of nature as the love of aquatics. Without
the natural instinct you cannot feel the peculiar exhilara-
tion which gladdens the born horseman and relieves him
from that burden of his cares.

There is an exulting sense of augmented power in the

Horses. 719

breast of such a man when he feels that all the strength
and swiftness of the noble animal that bears him have
become his own swiftness and his own strength; that he,
who but a moment before was the slowest of creatures,
may now follow the wild fox and the antelope; that, if
need were, he could traverse three horizons in a day. It
is this pride and delight of horsemanship, and not the
mere physical exertion, which gladden the heart of man
and add to his health and courage. Can any sensation be
finer than that of a good rider, well mounted, going across
the country at full speed? Only one other sensation is
comparable to it, that of steering a lively vessel when the
mainsail is wet with spray, and the sheet is straining tight,
and the topmast bends like whalebone, and the wind blows
fair and free !

An American newspaper lamented not long ago that
rich men in the United States had such a mania for driving
that they had thrown the saddle aside. The same evil
may be observed in France, and is even perceptible in
England, the last stronghold of noble equestrianism. The
excellence of modern roads, and the perfection of modern
carriage-building, have brought about this result. Thou-
sands of men own horses in these days who never bought
such a thing as a saddle, and would not know what to do
if hoisted into one; and their carriages are so very luxu-
rious as to be beneficial to nobody but invalids. There
are three classes of horse-owners —the men who can ride,
the men who can drive, and lastly the men who can sit
still and be driven about by a coachman. To the last the
horse is purely and simply a locomotive, into which his owner
puts fuel and water at stated times that it may make his
wheels go round. The drivers take a real interest in
horses, and often show great courage and attain quite a

80 Chapters on Animals.

surprising skill. Much may be said in favour of their
amusement, which has a fine excitement of its own. A
rider commands only one horse, a driver may hold four in
his hand at once; a rider hears no sound but that of hoofs,
the driver hears also the lively rumble of the wheels, and
feels the pleasant springing and swinging of the well-built
vehicle under him. The rider serves no one but himself,
the driver has an agreeable sense of importance when the
drag is crowded with fair passengers for whose safety he
feels himself responsible. Our modern usages, which pro-
hibit splendid saddlery to civilians and have made all orna-
mentation of it inconsistent with good taste, still allow
some splendour in carriage-harness, silver crests and
buckles, and other things not absolutely necessary, and in
the carriages themselves there are displays of wealth and
luxury which could never be concentrated in a saddle.
When a rich man has a taste for ostentation, he gratifies
it more easily in carriages than in saddle-horses. When a
poor man has five children and one horse, the beast cannot
carry the whole family on his back, but he can easily drag
it behind him in a four-wheeled conveyance. Even a
bachelor who keeps only one horse has cogent reasons for
preferring harness. A saddle-horse can carry his own
person, but his owner cannot take a servant with him nor
offer a place to a friend. All the reasons of convenience
(the most powerful of all reasons in the long run) are on
the side of harness in every country where the roads are
good. There are parts of France where it is already
thought an eccentricity to ride on horseback, and where
equestrians are so rare that if ever one makes his appear-
ance the children stare and laugh, and the grown-up
people smile, as they would at a man on stilts. In neigh-

drag, coach.

Horses. 81

bourhoods of that kind it is dangerous to a man’s reputa-
tion for gravity to be seen on horseback, and men of seri-
ous pretensions have the same objections to the saddle
that a bishop has to a bicycle. Hunting and war keep up
the art of riding; without them it would be in great dan-
ger of going out altogether, as falconry has gone out, to
be revived, like falconry, at some future period by a few
persons of wealth and leisure, as a curiosity of ancestral
custom.

The influence of the turf on horses and on horseman-
ship deserves more thorough investigation than these brief
chapters would permit. It does little or no good to riding,
except by creating a special professional class with quite
peculiar professional aims; and it does no good whatever
to the breeding of horses, except by transmitting the
capacity for great speed at a sudden “spurt,” which is
usually purchased at the cost of substantial qualities more
valuable for common use. Practically, I believe, the most
public benefit that the turf has given to England has been
her rapid Hansom cabs. They are very commonly horsed,
directly or indirectly, from the turf, and the swiftness which
whirls you through the interminable streets of London has
been first developed, either in the horse that drags you or
in some ancestor of his, for the chance of a triumph at
Epsom, or Newmarket, or Doncaster.

The turf, as it is followed, is not really an equestrian
recreation, any more than the watching of hired gladiators
was warfare. The swiftness of horses, being always
various and always having elements of chance, was
found to be a convenient subject for betting, and the
excitement of being in a great crowd on a race course
was found to be agreeable to everybody in search of a

Epsom, Newmarket, Doncaster, three famous English race courses.
G

82 Chapters on Animals.

stimulus. Races are a popular institution ; vacant minds
like them; and they are liked also as an amusement by
some minds too distinguished in serious pursuits to be
liable to any accusation of vacancy. Yet it seems prob-
able that the truest lover of horses would be of all men
the least likely to devote himself passionately to the turf.
What, to him, could be the pleasure of keeping animals to
be trained and ridden by paid agents, and never to know
their master?

The influence of the turf upon the physical perfection
of the horse has not been favourable to his beauty. The
race-horse has lost the beauty of nature in one direction,
as the prize-pig has departed from it in another. That
which his forms express is not beauty, but culture. You
see at once that he is a highly artificial product, the
creature of wealth and civilisation. Many people admire
him for that, because there is an inextricable confusion
in the popular mind between ideas of beauty and ideas
of careful cultivation. The race-horse has the charms of
a tail-coat, of a trained pear-tree, of all such superfine
results of human ingenuity, but he has lost the glory of
nature. Look at his straight neck, at the way he holds
his head, at his eager, anxious eye, often irritable and
vicious! Breeders for the turf have succeeded in sub-
stituting the straight line for the curve, as the dominant
expressional line, a sure and scientific manner of eradicat-
ing the elements of beauty. No real artist would ever
paint race-horses from choice. Good artists have occasion-
ally painted them for money. The meagre limbs, straight
lines, and shiny coat, have slight charms for an artist, who
generally chooses either what is beautiful or what is
picturesque, and the race-horse is neither picturesque nor
beautiful. Imagine what would become of the frieze of the

Horses. 83

Parthenon if you substituted modern race-horses for those
admirable little chargers the Athenians loved so well!
They have the true hippic beauty; fine curves every-
where; if they are not servile copies of pure nature, it is
only because they reach a still higher fidelity to the
Divine idea. Yet there exists a type superior even to
the noble horse of Phidias. In the heart of Nejed, where

FRONT OF THE PARTHENON.

the long-pursed unbeliever comes not, blooms the flower
of equine loveliness. Who that delights in horses would
not envy Mr. Palgrave his sight of the stables of Feysul,
the royal stables of Nejed? Ut rosa los florum, so are
those the stables of stables! The bold traveller, at his
life’s hazard, saw with his bodily eyes what our painters
see only in their dreams !

Parthenon Frieze. The Parthenon a temple at Athens, the most perfect
specimen of Greek Architecture. The frieze or flat space above the columns
is covered with sculptures by Phidias the famous Greek Sculptor.

Nejed or Nejd. A province in Arabia where the famous breed of Arabian
horses is reared. Mr. W. Gifford Palgrave an Englishman travelled much in
the far East and especially in Arabia.

Ut rosa flos florum, as the rose is the flower of flowers.

84 Chapters on Animals.

“Never,” he wrote afterwards, ‘‘never had I seen or
imagined so lovely a collection. Their stature was indeed
somewhat low: I do not think that any came fully up to
fifteen hands; fourteen appeared to me about their average;
but they were so exquisitely well shaped, that want of
greater size seemed hardly, if at all,a defect. Remarkably
full in the haunches, with a shoulder of a slope so elegant

HORSES FROM THE PARTHENON FRIEZE,

as to make one, in the words of an Arab poet, go ‘raving
mad about it;’ a little, a very little saddle-backed, just the
curve which indicates springiness without any weakness;
a head, broad above, and tapering down to a nose fine
enough to verify the phrase of ‘drinking from a pint-pot’
—did pint-pots exist in Nejed; a most intelligent and yet a
singularly gentle look, full eye, sharp, thorn-like little ear;
legs, fore and hind, that seemed as if made of hammered
iron, so clean and yet so well twisted with sinew; a neat

Horses. 85

round hoof, just the requisite for hard ground; the tail set
on or rather thrown out at a perfect arch; coat smooth,
shining, and light; the mane long, but not over-grown nor
heavy; and an air and step that seemed to say, ‘Look at

4 ip
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AN ARAB HORSE,

me, am I not pretty?’—their appearance justified all
reputation, all value, all poetry. The prevailing colour
was chestnut or gray, a light bay, an iron colour; white or
black were less common; full bay, flea-bitten, or pie-bald,
none. But if asked what are, after all, the specially dis-
tinctive points of the Nejdee horse, I should reply —the

86 Chapters on Animals.

slope of the shoulder, the extreme cleanness of the shank,
and the full-rounded haunch, though every other part, too,
has a perfection and a harmony unwitnessed (at least by
my eyes) anywhere else.”

Even the Arabs we see in Europe, however inferior to
that purest breed of Nejed, are enough to make clear to us
what the Arabian ideal is. That it is the central Divine
conception of horse-beauty, I think no artist doubts,
though artists often prefer other races from affection, or
because their own art is more picturesque than beautiful.
Veyrassat, for instance, who can etch cart-horses as nobody
else can etch them, has never, I believe, cared to illustrate
the more graceful breeds that excite the enthusiasm of poets.
So it has been with Rosa Bonheur, and the whole pictu-
resque school generally; they take naturally to the cart-
horse, whose massive grandeur satisfies them. Prefer-
ences of this kind, in the practice of artists, do not, however,
prove anything against the supreme beauty of the Arab.
The best painters always work more from sympathy and
affection than from admiration, and they take as models,
not what even they themselves consider most beautiful, but
what will take its place best in the class of pictures that
they paint. The truth is, that the Arab is much /vo beautiful
to be admissible in the pictures of the rustic schools; he
would spoil everything around him, he would be as much
out of place as a Greek statue in a cottage interior. Even
the Greek horses of Phidias are too noble to be ridden by
cavaliers not endowed with the full beauty of the human
body, beautiful strong arms to hold the restraining bridle,
beautiful strong legs to press the charger’s sides! And
how then shall you paint the daintily-exquisite Arab along
with wooden-shod Normandy peasants, and fustian-breeched

Rosa Bonheur, The famous French animal painter, born, 1822.

Horses. 87

ROSA BONHEUR.

Yorkshire grooms? Where shall we find a rider worthy
of him? Not the mean-looking modern Sultan, going
cloaked to the Mosque on a Friday; not even the white-
robed Emir, ringed by a host of spears! Far in the dis-

88 Chapters on Animals.

tance of the past rises the one romantic figure worthy to
mount the perfect Arab. Rich in jewelled caparison, the
faultless horse awaits him! The saddle is empty as yet,
and its diamonds flash in the torchlight, but the little sharp
ears are listening, they have detected the step of the master!
There is a movement in far corridors, the golden gates are
open. Like a stream that glitters in the moonlight, the
court descends the stair! The master sits in the saddle,
the proud steed steps along the street ; all men are prostrate
before the Caliph.

“Sole star of all that place and time
I see him—in his golden prime,
The good Haroun Alraschid!”

From Tennyson’s “ Recollections of the Arabian Nights.”