Pis. How pleasant it would be to discuss these sentiments over a tankard of ale! I have a simple bashfulness against going into a public tavern, but I think we could dodge into the Castle, without being much seen.

Via. And I have a sort of shuddering about me, that is willing to go more frankly in. Let us put up, then. By my halidom! here is a little dead fish hanging at my hook :— and yet I never felt him bite.

Pis. 'Tis only a little week-old gudgeon, and he had not strength enough to stir the cork, However, we may say boldly that we have caught a fish.

Via. Nay, I have another here in my bottle. He was sleeping on his back at the top of the water, and I got him out nimbly with the hollow of my hand.

Pis. We have caught a brace then ;-besides the great one that was lost amongst the grass. I am glad on't; for we can bestow them upon some poor hungry person in our way home. It is passable good sport for the place.

Via. I am satisfied it must be called so. But the next time I come hither, I shall bring a reel with me, and a readymade minnow, for I am certain there must be some marvellous huge pikes here; they always make a scarcity of other fish. However, I have been bravely entertained, and, at the first holiday, I will come to it again.

"Love me, love my dog."

"LOVE ME, LOVE MY DOG"

EEMS, at first sight, an unreasonable demand.

May I

S profess no tenderness for Belinda without vowing an

attachment to Shock? Must I feel an equal warmth towards my bosom friend and his greyhound? Some country gentlemen keep a pack of dogs. Am I expected to divide my personal regard for my Lord D. amongst all his celebrated foxhounds?

I may be constitutionally averse to the whole canine species: I have been bitten, perhaps, in my infancy by a mastiff, or pinned by a bull-dog. There are harrowing tales on record of hydrophobia, of human barkings, and inhuman smotherings: a dog may be my bugbear. Again, there are differences in taste. One man may like to have his hand licked all over by a grateful spaniel; but I would not have my extremity served so-even by the human tongue.

But the proverb, so arrogant and absolute in spirit, becomes harmless in its common application. The terms are seldom enforced, except by persons that a gentleman is not likely to embrace in his affection-rat-catchers, butchers, and bullbaiters, tinkers and blind mendicants, beldames and witches. A slaughterman's tulip-eared puppy is as liable to engage one's liking as his chuckle-headed master. When a courtier makes friends with a drover, he will not be likely to object to a sheep-dog as a third party in the alliance.

"Love me," says Mother Sawyer, "love my dog."

Who careth to dote on either a witch or her familiar? The proverb thus loses half of its oppression in other cases, it may become a pleasant fiction, an agreeable confession. I forget what pretty Countess it was who made a confession of her tenderness for a certain sea-captain by her abundant caresses of his Esquimaux wolf-dog. The shame of the avowal became milder, (as the virulence of the small-pox is abated after passing through the constitution of a cow,) by its transmission through the animal.

In like manner, a formal young Quaker and Quakeress, perfect strangers to each other, and who might otherwise have sat mum chance together for many hours, fell suddenly to romping, merely through the maiden's playfulness with Obadiah's terrier. The dog broke the ice of formality, end, as a third party, took off the painful awkwardness of selfintroduction.

Sir Ulic Mackilligut, when he wished to break handsomely with Mistress Tabitha Bramble, kicked her cur. The dog broke the force of the affront, and the knight's gallantry was spared the reproach of a direct confession of disgust towards the spinster; as the lady took the aversion to herself only as the brute's ally.

My step-mother Hubbard and myself were not on visiting terms for many years; not, we flattered ourselves, through any hatred or uncharitableness, disgraceful between relations, but from a constitutional antipathy on the one side, and a doting affection on the other-to a dog. My breach of duty and decent respect was softened down into my dread of hydrophobia my second-hand parent even persuaded herself that I was jealous of her regard for Bijou. It was a comfortable self-delusion on both sides. But the scape-goat died, and then, having no reasonable reason to excuse my visits, we came to an open rupture. There was no hope of another favourite. My step-mother had no general affection for the race, but only for that particular cur. It was one of those incongruous attachments, not accountable to reason, but seemingly predestined by fate. The dog was no keepsake-ne

H

favourite of a dear deceased friend. Ugly as the brute was, she loved him for his own sake,-not for any fondness and fidelity, for he was the most ungrateful dog, under kindness, that I ever knew,-not for his vigilance, for he was never wakeful. He was not useful, like a turnspit; nor accomplished, for he could not dance. He had not personal beauty

"Poor-tray Charmant."

even to make him a welcome object; and yet, if my relation had been requested to display her jewels, she would have pointed to the dog, and have answered, in the very spirit of Cornelia," There is my Bijou."

Conceive, reader, under this endearing title, a hideous