CHAPTER V. 



SALLY'S POOR RELATIONS. 



" It is true that the ape is a merry and bold beast." BACOX. 



I STOOD for an hour this morning before the Madonna 

 di San Sisto of Raphael. Of all pictures it has been my 

 good fortune to see, none has so won its way to my inner- 

 most soul as this, the genius of which thrills through 

 every fibre of my being. Last night I listened to Don 

 Giovanni, and held my breath lest I should lose one note 

 of Mozart's enchanting music. And this afternoon I 

 visited the Dresden Zoo, and watched the chimpanzee at 

 play. 



Does there seem a bathos here ? A sudden drop from 

 the sublime to the ridiculous? Yes. And it is inten- 

 tional. I know not how better to enforce the fact of the 

 immense difference between the intelligence of the ape at 

 its best and human genius at its highest. The gulf 

 between the chimpanzee and Raphael or Mozart is tre- 

 mendous. Between the chimpanzee and the poor woolly - 

 pated bushman I saw the other day at the Vogelweise 

 the annual fair of Dresden or indeed the German 

 peasants who were paying their ten pfennigs for the show, 

 it is less wide. But even the rudest savage, through 

 additional brain-stuff, and the wondrous power of language, 



