nduct of the Understanding.

_THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN._

"_The reader must remember that my work is concerning the_
aspects _of things only._"--RUSKIN.

We,--the _Sine Qua Non_, the Duchess, the Sputchard, the Dutchard, the
Ricapicticapic, Oz and Oz, the Maid of Lorn, and myself,--left Crieff
some fifteen years ago, on a bright September morning, soon after
daybreak, in a gig. It was a morning still and keen: the sun sending his
level shafts across Strathearn, and through the thin mist over its river
hollows, to the fierce Aberuchil Hills, and searching out the dark blue
shadows in the corries of Benvorlich. But who and how many are "we?" To
make you as easy as we all were, let me tell you we were four; and are
not these dumb friends of ours persons rather than things? is not their
soul ampler, as Plato would say, than their body, and contains rather
than is contained? Is not what lives and wills in them, and is
affectionate, as spiritual, as immaterial, as truly removed from mere
flesh, blood, and bones, as that soul which is the proper self of their
master? And when we look each other in the face, as I now look in
Dick's, who is lying in his "corny" by the fireside, and he in mine, is
it not as much the dog within looking from out his eyes--the windows of
his soul--as it is the man from his?

The _Sine Qua Non_, who will not be pleased at being spoken of, is such
an one as that vain-glorious and chivalrous Ulric von Huetten--the
Reformation's man of wit, and of the world, and of the sword, who slew
Monkery with the wild laughter of his _Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_--had
in his mind when he wrote thus to his friend Fredericus Piscator (Mr.
Fred. Fisher), on the 19th May 1519, "_Da mihi uxorem, Friderice, et ut
scias qualem, venustam, adolescentulam, probe educatam, hilarem,
verecundam, patientem._" "_Qualem_," he lets Frederic understand in the
sentence preceding, is one "_qua cum ludam, qua jocos conferam,
amoeniores et leviusculas fabulas misceam, ubi sollicitudinis aciem
obtundam, curarum aestus mitigem_." And if you would know more of the
_Sine Qua Non_, and in English, for the world is dead to Latin now, you
will find her name and nature in Shakspeare's words, when King Henry the
Eighth says, "go thy ways."

_The Duchess_, alias all the other names till you come to the _Maid of
Lorn_, is a rough, gnarled, incomparable little bit of a terrier, three
parts Dandie-Dinmont, and one part--chi