Part 5

The Welsh Fusileers’ goat 221

Old Abe 223

Love leading the orchestra 232

The elephants of Germanicus 232

The cat showman 233

Pinta and his mule Marco 234

Help, the railway dog of England 235

Prof. Bonnetty’s troupe 237

The Brighton Cats 239

A cat with a conscience 241

“Tell me thy secret, Beppo” 242

Sculpture of greyhounds in the Vatican 248

Sculpture of thieving monkey in the Vatican 249

Stag in alabaster in the Vatican 250

Pliny’s doves; a mosaic in the Capitol at Rome 251

Patrician or plebeian? 253

The chimera; Etruscan sculpture in the Bargello at Florence 254

SOME SCOTCH CELEBRITIES.

FAMOUS PETS.

SOME SCOTCH CELEBRITIES.

Beautiful Edinburgh, her gray warmed into gold by the summer sunshine, lies half-asleep at the foot of her Castle Rock, and dreams, through the peaceful present, of her stormy, impetuous past. Each grain of dust there is historic. The traveler’s every footstep wakes some memory of old days. Over castle and palace, broad way and narrow close, over Canongate, Grassmarket, Arthur’s Seat, over hills that environ and streams that link, a magician has cast his spell--so intimately blending past and present, that we cannot look upon the one without remembering the other.

To-day in sculptured marble, as erstwhile in life, the weaver of the spell yet guards his time-worn city, like the good genius of its fate. Passionless, mute, he sits brooding--the bustle of existence all around him--while the hound at his side gazes up at him, in rest unbroken as his own. The Scott monument--that is what rises before us; and the broad-browed, deep-eyed enchanter within, that--as every schoolboy knows--is the great Sir Walter Scott, the good, well-loving, dearly-loved Sir Walter.

“What has he not done for every one of us?” writes the historian of Rab. “Who else ever, except Shakespeare, so diverted mankind, entertained and entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely?” Who, indeed? And, in truth, we owe him far more than mere diversion, however liberal and wholesome; and may count it not least among his gifts to the world that, from the height of his fame, he set it example of a wise, distinguishing regard for animals.

“He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast”--

might stand for the motto of his life. From babyhood to old age the power of loving enriched him, and won from “all things, great or small,” a warm response.

The most conversible, attachable, and hence, dearest, among his humble friends were, naturally, horses and dogs. He liked, however, almost everything that breathes; and poultry, cattle, sheep, or pigs, cats and birds--all shared, to greater or less degree, in his good-will. An old gray badger lived, hermit-like, in a hole near Abbotsford for many years under his protection. A hen and a pig formed ardent attachments to him; and a pair of little donkeys would trot like puppies at his heels whenever they got the chance.

Carlyle tells the story of a Blenheim cocker in Edinburgh, the most timid and reserved of its race, which shrank from all attention save that of its mistress, until one day on the street it made a sudden spring towards a tall, halting stranger, and fawned upon him in an ecstasy of delight. This was, of course, our own Sir Walter, whose great heart, like a magnet, drew to it all other hearts, whether bold or shy.

His horses all fed from his hand, and preferred his attendance to that of the grooms; while, until lameness obliged him, in later years, to give up walking, he would never ride on Sunday, believing that “all domestic animals have a full right to their Sabbath of rest.” If his four-footed dependants were ill, he nursed and prescribed for them. When little Spice, an asthmatic terrier, was following the carriage, he would carry it over the brooks, that it might not get wet. In fine, he was always what too few are--“a gentleman, even to his dogs.”