APPENDIX. 611 



which he begged me to accept and to keep for his sake. It is now at 

 Walton Hall; and the identical cotinga is on the staircase, just 

 opposite to the large window. Peters died at Rome ; and Pope 

 Gregory XVI. bought his picture of the Creation, and placed it in 

 the Vatican in the year 1836. CHARLES WATERTON. 



MYDDELTON LODGE, October 2, 1861. 



Notes on Sterne. The Dead Ass. 



" * And this,' said he, putting the remains of a crust into his 

 wallet, ' should have been thy portion, hadst thou been alive to 

 have shared it with me.' " 



None but those who have lived in Spain, or read the works of 

 Cervantes de Saavedra, can form a correct idea of the kindly feeling 

 which exists between a Spanish peasant and his faithful ass. They 

 may be said to love each other cordially. 



But, here in England, this poor patient porter is seldom considered 

 in any other light than that of a stubborn and neglected slave. We 

 may see it picking up a scanty fare on the side of our Queen's high- 

 way, or chewing thistles in the neighbouring hedges ; the sport of 

 idle village urchins, who delight in adding pain to misery. 



Often as I stroll along through lanes and skirts of towns, where 

 this outcast son of labour has still a few roods of land to call his 

 own, I exclaim : " Thou art so bare and full of wretchedness ! famine 

 is in thy cheeks, need and oppression stareth in thy eyes ; upon thy 

 back hangs ragged misery ! " 



In Spain, however, this patient carrier has comforts rarely found 

 elsewhere. Good treatment there has altered his downcast looks, 

 and shown us that mercy and a better kind of food have not been 

 thrown away upon him. 



Almost every labouring family in Spain can boast a favourite ass ; 

 and Cervantes has drawn with such a master-hand the affection which 

 exists between them, that I never read the touching story of " The 

 Dead Ass," in Sterne, without joining in sorrow with the "mourner/' 

 and lamenting the loss which he had sustained. 



Cervantes tells us, so great was the anxiety of Sancho Panza for 



