twitching his mouth
and shaking his hanging head, a picture of disgrace and obduracy. I have
seen boys being taken to station-houses, who were as like him as his own
brother.

The dogs of shy neighbourhoods I observe to avoid play, and to be
conscious of poverty. They avoid work, too, if they can, of course; that
is in the nature of all animals. I have the pleasure to know a dog in a
back street in the neighbourhood of Walworth who has greatly
distinguished himself in the minor drama, and who takes his portrait
with him when he makes an engagement, for the illustration of the
playbill. His portrait (which is not at all like him) represents him in
the act of dragging to the earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed to
have tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a British officer. The design
is pure poetry, for there is no such Indian in the piece, and no such
incident. He is a dog of the Newfoundland breed, for whose honesty I
would be bail to any amount; but whose intellectual qualities in
association with dramatic fiction I cannot rate high. Indeed, he is too
honest for the profession he has entered. Being at a town in Yorkshire
last summer, and seeing him posted in the bill of the night, I attended
the performance. His first scene was eminently successful; but, as it
occupied a second in its representation (and five lines in the bill), it
scarcely afforded ground for a cool and deliberate judgment of his
powers. He had merely to bark, run on, and jump through an inn window,
after a comic fugitive. The next scene of importance to the fable was a
little marred in its interest by his over-anxiety; forasmuch as while
his master (a belated soldier in a den of robbers on a tempestuous
night) was feelingly lamenting the absence of his faithful dog, and
laying great stress on the fact that he was thirty leagues away, the
faithful dog was barking furiously in the prompter's box, and clearly
choking himself against his collar. But it was in his greatest scene of
all that his honesty got the better of him. He had to enter a dense and
trackless forest, on the trail of the murderer, and there to fly at the
murderer when he found him resting at the foot of a tree, with his
victim bound ready for slaughter. It was a hot night, and he came into
the forest from an altogether unexpected direction, in the sweetest
temper, at a very deliberate trot, not in the least excited; trotted to
the foot-lights with his tongue out; and there sat down,