y that charming ease. For to be a
high-mannered and high-minded gentleman, careless, affable, and gay,
is the inborn pretension of the dog. The large dog, so much lazier, so
much more weighed upon with matter, so majestic in repose, so
beautiful in effort, is born with the dramatic means to wholly
represent the part. And it is more pathetic and perhaps more
instructive to consider the small dog in his conscientious and
imperfect efforts to outdo Sir Philip Sidney.[11] For the ideal of the
dog is feudal and religious;[12] the ever-present polytheism, the
whip-bearing Olympus of mankind, rules them on the one hand; on the
other, their singular difference of size and strength among themselves
effectually prevents the appearance of the democratic notion. Or we
might more exactly compare their society to the curious spectacle
presented by a school--ushers, monitors, and big and little
boys--qualified by one circumstance, the introduction of the other
sex. In each, we should observe a somewhat similar tension of manner,
and somewhat similar points of honour. In each the larger animal keeps
a contemptuous good humour; in each the smaller annoys him with
wasp-like impudence, certain of practical immunity; in each we shall
find a double life producing double characters, and an excursive and
noisy heroism combined with a fair amount of practical timidity. I
have known dogs, and I have known school heroes that, set aside the
fur, could hardly have been told apart; and if we desire to understand
the chivalry of old, we must turn to the school playfields or the
dungheap where the dogs are trooping.

Woman, with the dog, has been long enfranchised. Incessant massacre of
female innocents has changed the proportions of the sexes and
perverted their relations. Thus, when we regard the manners of the
dog, we see a romantic and monogamous animal, once perhaps as delicate
as the cat, at war with impossible conditions. Man has much to answer
for; and the part he plays is yet more damnable and parlous[13] than
Corin's in the eyes of Touchstone. But his intervention has at least
created an imperial situation for the rare surviving ladies. In that
society they reign without a rival: conscious queens; and in the only
instance of a canine wife-beater that has ever fallen under my notice,
the criminal was somewhat excused by the circumstances of his story.
He is a little, very alert, well-bred, intelligent Skye, as black as a
hat, with a wet bra