odels and the forms
of immortal beauty, the heroic friezes of the Temple of Theseus, the
marble processions of sacrificial animals, have had a steady molding,
educating influence equal to a society of decorative art upon the people
and the animals who have dwelt in this artistic atmosphere. The Attic
goat has become an artificially artistic being; though of course he is
not now what he was, as a poser, in the days of Polycletus. There is
opportunity for a very instructive essay by Mr. E. A. Freeman on the
decadence of the Attic goat under the influence of the Ottoman Turk.

The American deer, in the free atmosphere of our country, and as yet
untouched by our decorative art, is without self-consciousness, and
all his attitudes are free and unstudied. The favorite position of
the deer--his fore-feet in the shallow margin of the lake, among the
lily-pads, his antlers thrown back and his nose in the air at the
moment he hears the stealthy breaking of a twig in the forest--is still
spirited and graceful, and wholly unaffected by the pictures of him
which the artists have put upon canvas.

Wherever you go in the Northern forest you will find deer-paths. So
plainly marked and well-trodden are they that it is easy to mistake them
for trails made by hunters; but he who follows one of them is soon in
difficulties. He may find himself climbing through cedar thickets an
almost inaccessible cliff, or immersed in the intricacies of a marsh.
The "run," in one direction, will lead to water; but, in the other,
it climbs the highest hills, to which the deer retires, for safety and
repose, in impenetrable thickets. The hunters, in winter, find them
congregated in "yards," where they can be surrounded and shot as
easily as our troops shoot Comanche women and children in their winter
villages. These little paths are full of pitfalls among the roots and
stones; and, nimble as the deer is, he sometimes breaks one of his
slender legs in them. Yet he knows how to treat himself without a
surgeon. I knew of a tame deer in a settlement in the edge of the forest
who had the misfortune to break her leg. She immediately disappeared
with a delicacy rare in an invalid, and was not seen for two weeks. Her
friends had given her up, supposing that she had dragged herself away
into the depths of the woods, and died of starvation, when one day she
returned, cured of lameness, but thin as a virgin shadow. She had the
sense to shun the doctor; to lie down in