mately be accounted
beautiful. This class of animals are conventionally admired by the body
of the upper classes, while the pecuniarily lower classes--and that
select minority of the leisure class among whom the rigorous canon that
abjures thrift is in a measure obsolescent--find beauty in one class of
animals as in another, without drawing a hard and fast line of pecuniary
demarcation between the beautiful and the ugly. In the case of those
domestic animals which are honorific and are reputed beautiful, there
is a subsidiary basis of merit that should be spokes of. Apart from the
birds which belong in the honorific class of domestic animals, and which
owe their place in this class to their non-lucrative character alone,
the animals which merit particular attention are cats, dogs, and fast
horses. The cat is less reputable than the other two just named, because
she is less wasteful; she may even serve a useful end. At the same time
the cat's temperament does not fit her for the honorific purpose. She
lives with man on terms of equality, knows nothing of that relation of
status which is the ancient basis of all distinctions of worth, honor,
and repute, and she does not lend herself with facility to an invidious
comparison between her owner and his neighbors. The exception to this
last rule occurs in the case of such scarce and fanciful products as
the Angora cat, which have some slight honorific value on the ground
of expensiveness, and have, therefore, some special claim to beauty on
pecuniary grounds.

The dog has advantages in the way of uselessness as well as in special
gifts of temperament. He is often spoken of, in an eminent sense, as
the friend of man, and his intelligence and fidelity are praised. The
meaning of this is that the dog is man's servant and that he has
the gift of an unquestioning subservience and a slave's quickness in
guessing his master's mood. Coupled with these traits, which fit him
well for the relation of status--and which must for the present purpose
be set down as serviceable traits--the dog has some characteristics
which are of a more equivocal aesthetic value. He is the filthiest of
the domestic animals in his person and the nastiest in his habits. For
this he makes up is a servile, fawning attitude towards his master, and
a readiness to inflict damage and discomfort on all else. The dog, then,
commends himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for
mastery, and as he is als