a cross between a St.
Bernard and a bloodhound, built and coloured like a lioness and of
splendid proportions, but of such indomitably aggressive propensities,
that, after breaking his kennel-chain and nearly devouring a luckless
little sister of one of the servants, he had to be killed. Dickens
always protested that Sultan was a Fenian, for that no dog, not a
secretly sworn member of that body, would ever have made such a point,
muzzled as he was, of rushing at and bearing down with fury anything in
scarlet with the remotest resemblance to a British uniform. Sultan's
successor was Don, presented by Mr. Frederic Lehmann, a grand
Newfoundland brought over very young, who with Linda became parent to a
couple of Newfoundlands, that were still gambolling about their master,
huge, though hardly out of puppydom, when they lost him. He had given to
one of them the name of Bumble, from having observed, as he described
it, "a peculiarly pompous and overbearing manner he had of appearing to
mount guard over the yard when he was an absolute infant." Bumble was
often in scrapes. Describing to Mr. Fields a drought in the summer of
1868, when their poor supply of ponds and surface wells had become
waterless, he wrote: "I do not let the great dogs swim in the canal,
because the people have to drink of it. But when they get into the
Medway, it is hard to get them out again. The other day Bumble (the son,
Newfoundland dog) got into difficulties among some floating timber, and
became frightened. Don (the father) was standing by me, shaking off the
wet and looking on carelessly, when all of a sudden he perceived
something amiss, and went in with a bound and brought Bumble out by the
ear. The scientific way in which he towed him along was charming." The
description of his own reception, on his reappearance after America, by
Bumble and his brother, by the big and beautiful Linda, and by his
daughter Mary's handsome little Pomeranian, may be added from his
letters to the same correspondent. "The two Newfoundland dogs coming to
meet me, with the usual carriage and the usual driver, and beholding me
coming in my usual dress out at the usual door, it struck me that their
recollection of my having been absent for any unusual time was at once
cancelled. They behaved (they are both young dogs) exactly in their
usual manner; coming behind the basket phaeton as we trotted along, and
lifting their heads to have their ears pulled, a special attention w