i' a swirl."

_That's_ the shepherd-dog, as we have heard him described from a
specimen, which was the friend and follower of a valued one, who, when a
boy ('tis many years ago), frisked with the dog, over _one_ of the many
ferny haughs that margin the lovely Tweed above and below Peebles. It is
_the_ collie we have seen, on one of the sheep-farms of Lanarkshire,
obey its young master by a word or two, as unintelligible to us as
Japanese. But to the Culter "Luath," to hear was to obey; and in a
quarter of an hour a flock of sheep, which had been feeding on a
hillSide half a mile off, were brought back, driven by this faithful
"bit doggie." We wonder not that shepherds love their dogs. Why, even
the New Smithfield cattle-drovers, who drive sheep along the streets of
London on a Monday or Friday, never even require to urge their faithful
partners. Well may the gifted authoress of "The Dream" address "the
faithful guardian"--

"Oh, tried and trusted! thou whose love
Ne'er changes nor forsakes,
Thou proof, how perfect God hath stamp'd
The meanest thing He makes;
Thou, whom no snare entraps to serve,
No art is used to tame
(Train'd, like ourselves, thy path to know,
By words of love and blame);
Friend! who beside the cottage door,
Or in the rich man's hall,
With steadfast faith still answerest
The one familiar call;
Well by poor hearth and lordly home
Thy couchant form may rest,
And Prince and Peasant trust thee still,
To guard what they love best."

_Hon. Mrs Norton, "The Dream," &c._, p. 192.

No ordinary-sized volume, much less a short article, could give a tithe
of the true anecdotes of members of the dog race. Mere references to
their biography would take up a volume of Bibliography itself, just as
their forms, and character, and "pose," give endless subject to the
painter. Of modern authors, no one loved dogs more truly than Sir Walter
Scott, as the reader of his writings and of his biography is well
aware;[52] but it may not be generally known that, on the only occasion
when the great novelist met the Ayrshire peasant,--

"Virgilium tantum vidi,"--

the poem, which had made Burns a wonder to the boy then "unknown," was
that of "The Twa Dogs;" so that, even then, Scott had commenced to show
his attachment to these faithful followers. It was in the house of Sir
Adam Ferguson, when Scott was a mere lad; and the scene was described
most vi