THE RAVEN AND THE DOG. 385 



the Bible ought to have been attended with different 

 effects, one instance amongst the thousands that might 

 be adduced, of the facility with which religious truths 

 can be taught by a routine and common-place process, 

 and by which, though the memory is impressed, the 

 heart may remain altogether untouched and uninflu- 

 enced. 



Very different from the character and disposition of 

 the idle and heedless boy, who killed this poor bird, was 

 the conduct of a dog, (we do not now recollect whether 

 it was the Raven's chief friend, the otter-dog, or 

 another,) by whom its life had been a short time before 

 preserved. By some accident the Raven had fallen into 

 a tub of water, and either weakened by struggling, or 

 unable to get out owing to its feathers being soaked 

 with water, it was nearly drowned. The dog, chained 

 at a short distance, saw the poor bird's danger, and drag- 

 ging his heavy kennel towards it, reached his head over 

 the side of the tub, and taking the drowning Raven up 

 in his mouth, laid him gently on the ground, where he 

 soon recovered, to die by the hand of the boy, who, 

 though he might have known by heart, had never 

 learned to feel in his heart the golden precept, of 

 " doing to others as he would be done by." 



Another instance of attachment, though originating in 

 a quadruped, yet so closely connects itself with the 

 subject-matter before us, that its insertion needs no 

 apology. A cat having kittened between the tiles and 

 roof of an out-house at Earley Court, in August 1836, 

 was a short time afterwards accidentally killed, and two 

 out of three of her kittens were caught in a trap placed 

 there for that purpose; the third, however, remained in 

 its hiding-place, eluding all attempts to catch it, when, 

 to prevent its being starved, (as it was too young to feed 

 itself) a sort of platform was fixed against the tiles, and 

 food and milk placed within its reach. It so happened 

 that a brood of chickens was in the habit of attending 

 the spot near the kitten's quarters, who by degrees ap- 



2 C 



