generally moves with its head erect, looks freely abroad on the skies
and earth, with an eye expressive of lively emotions. The ass is seen
trudging slowly along, as if sensible of the hopelessness of a
cessation from toil; and, full of melancholy thoughts, its leaden eye
is fixed on the ground. Yet its shape and its habits, in its state of
servitude, present something that is pleasing, though, on the whole,
they are somewhat untoward and ungainly.

_Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--The ass is far from being incapable of
understanding the nature of the employments in which he is engaged, or
disobedient to the commands of his master. An ass was employed, at
Carisbrook, in the Isle of Wight, in drawing water by a large wheel
from a deep well, supposed to have been sunk by the Romans. When his
keeper wanted water, he would call the ass by his name, saying, "I want
water; get into the wheel;" which wish the ass immediately complied
with; and there can be no doubt but that he knew the precise number of
times necessary for the wheel to revolve upon its axis in order to
complete his labor; for every time he brought the bucket to the surface
of the well, he stopped and turned round his head to observe the moment
when his master laid hold of the bucket to draw it towards him, because
he had then a nice motion to make either slightly forward or backward,
as the situation of the bucket might require.

In 1816, an ass belonging to Captain Dundas was shipped on board the
Ister, bound from Gibraltar to Malta. The vessel struck on a sand-bank
off the Point de Gat, and the ass was thrown overboard into a sea which
was so stormy that a boat that soon after left the ship was lost. In
the course of a few days, when the gates of Gibraltar were opened in
the morning, the guard was surprised by the same ass, which had so
recently been removed, presenting itself for admittance. On entering,
it proceeded immediately to the stable which it had formerly occupied.
The ass had not only swam to the shore, but found its own way from
Point de Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than two hundred miles,
through a mountainous and intricate country intersected by streams,
which it had never passed before, but which it had now crossed so
expeditiously that it must have gone by a route leading the most
directly to Gibraltar.

A few years ago, at Swalwell, England, a man set his bull-dog to attack
an ass, that for a while gallantly defended itself with its hee