wn to
the other extreme. I myself am able to present these considerations thus
dispassionately as a friend of humanity rather than a foe to caninity;
but all are not favored with a judicial spirit.

I suspect, in fact, that this inclining of our race to these brute
servitors is largely due to the same cause which promotes the love of
"horse-flesh." Man must assert his dominion over the brutes. He wants
some tangible evidence, always beside him and running at his heels, of
his superiority to something. It is a great upholder of his
self-respect. It is so consoling, amid our conscious defeats and
snubbings by a proud and unmanageable world, to have at hand a
fellow-creature, strong enough to tear us in pieces, who will grovel at
our feet, and quail before our eye, and let us laugh at him while he
makes a fool of himself at our bidding. Even the most successful and
superior men find herein a grateful outlet for their surplus
masterfulness.

But I prefer to ascribe the tender and enthusiastic feeling which men
have for their dogs not so much to the merits of the latter as to an
overflowing and supererogatory goodness in the former. The human runs
readily into the humane. Man is, after all, a loving animal, and is
disposed to lavish his affection upon all who come into the right
relation and moral angle with himself. He loves to be munificent as well
as magnificent, and to be the patron of somebody or something. He has no
little magnanimity toward such as put themselves in an abject dependence
upon his honor and justice. He is ready to see all good in those who
come not in competition with himself. He has a fund of generous
enthusiasm which finds too little occupation in the world, and is glad
to find or create an object for it near at hand. So that his dog,
unconsciously to himself, is seen rather in the reflection of his own
light. He clothes him with those amiable qualities which superabound in
his own heart, and attributes to him a fidelity which is really far more
remarkable on his own side.

Dogs are remarkable for their dreaming capacity. A dog never seems to
sleep but he dreams, and very likely is quite unable to distinguish his
waking and sleeping impressions. And is it not altogether probable that
those who have much to do with them catch the infection, so that they
view the canine race through a dream-like medium and as slumbering dogs
are haunted by imaginary flies?

But I fear lest I shall be suspected of h