eat painter, when he wanted to
make a portrait of the witty canon, "_Is thy servant a dog, that he
should do this thing?_"

There is great diversity of standard in matters of taste. In China, a
well-roasted pup, of any variety of the very variable _Canis
familiaris_, is a dainty dish. In London the greatest exquisite delights
in the taste of a half-cooked woodcock, but would scruple to eat a
lady's lap-dog, even though descended, by indubitable pedigree, from a
genuine "liver-and-tan" spaniel, that followed King Charles II. in his
strolls through St James's Park; and which was given to her ladyship's
ancestress on a day recorded, perhaps, in the diary of Mr Samuel Pepys.
Again, in the country of the Esquimaux, who has not read in the
intensely interesting narratives of the Moravian missionaries, how the
dogs of the "Innuit"--of "the men," as they call themselves--are, in
winter, indispensable to their very existence? Parry, Lyon, Franklin,
Richardson, Ross, Rae, Penny, Sutherland, Inglefield, and Kane, have
told us what excellent "carriage"-pullers these hardy children of the
snow become from early infancy; and how the more they work, like the
wives of savages in Australia, the more they are kicked. Passing over
the dogs of the Indian tribes of North America and the gaunt race in
Patagonia, the reader may remember that the Roman youth, like the young
Briton, had, in the days of Horace, his outer marks--one was, that he
loved to have a dog, or a whole pack beside him--"_gaudet canibus_."
This attachment to the dog is given us "from above," and is one of the
many "good gifts" which proceed from Him, who made man and dog
"familiar," as the apt specific name of Linnaeus denominates the latter.
One of our greatly-gifted poets, in a cynical mood, could write an
epitaph on a favourite Newfoundlander, and end it with the dismal lines
on his views of "earthly friends"--

"He never knew but one,--and here he lies."

Our genial and home-loving Cowper has made his dog Beau classical. We
must beg our readers to refresh their memories, by looking into the
Olney bard's exquisite story,

"My spaniel, prettiest of his race,
And high in pedigree,"

and they will find that _that_ story of "The Dog and the Water-lily" was
"no fable," and that Beau really understood his master's wish when he
fetched him a water-lily out of "Ouse's silent tide." How graceful are
the last two stanzas of that sweet little poem--

"Charm'd w