d radically devoid of
truth. The day of an intelligent small dog is passed in the
manufacture and the laborious communication of falsehood; he lies with
his tail, he lies with his eye, he lies with his protesting paw; and
when he rattles his dish or scratches at the door his purpose is other
than appears. But he has some apology to offer for the vice. Many of
the signs which form his dialect have come to bear an arbitrary
meaning, clearly understood both by his master and himself; yet when a
new want arises he must either invent a new vehicle of meaning or
wrest an old one to a different purpose; and this necessity frequently
recurring must tend to lessen his idea of the sanctity of symbols.
Meanwhile the dog is clear in his own conscience, and draws, with a
human nicety, the distinction between formal and essential truth. Of
his punning perversions, his legitimate dexterity with symbols, he is
even vain; but when he has told and been detected in a lie, there is
not a hair upon his body but confesses guilt. To a dog of gentlemanly
feeling theft and falsehood are disgraceful vices. The canine, like
the human, gentleman demands in his misdemeanours Montaigne's "_je ne
sais quoi de genereux_."[6] He is never more than half ashamed of
having barked or bitten; and for those faults into which he has been
led by the desire to shine before a lady of his race, he retains, even
under physical correction, a share of pride. But to be caught lying,
if he understands it, instantly uncurls his fleece.

Just as among dull observers he preserves a name for truth, the dog
has been credited with modesty. It is amazing how the use of language
blunts the faculties of man---that because vainglory finds no vent in
words, creatures supplied with eyes have been unable to detect a fault
so gross and obvious. If a small spoiled dog were suddenly to be
endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about
himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a
garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for
falsehood, in a year's time he would have gone far to weary out our
love. I was about to compare him to Sir Willoughby Patterne,[7] but
the Patternes have a manlier sense of their own merits; and the
parallel, besides, is ready. Hans Christian Andersen,[8] as we behold
him in his startling memoirs, thrilling from top to toe with an
excruciating vanity, and scouting even along the street for shadows of
off