130 THE MASTIFF FROM ELIZABETH REIGN. 



There is a splendid Ulmer mastiff by Sneyders at Burleigh 

 Park, near Oakham, which I had the pleasure of inspecting, 

 through Mr. Finch's kindness. There is also a fine painting 

 of a cropped eared, xanthic fawn coloured, black eared, black 

 muzzled mastiff at Belvoir Castle, by the Flemish artist 

 Weeninx, who died 1621, aged only thirty-nine. Thus we 

 may estimate the picture would be painted about 1610. It 

 represents a mastiff just having killed a wolf, a hunter has 

 come up and is in the act of blowing a horn, the dog is 

 standing on a fallen butt of a tree, and is barking ; it has the 

 short head and blunt muzzle, and is of vast size, with ponder- 

 ous limbs, and would hold its own on the show bench at the 

 present day. 



It is worthy of notice that in nearly all the early paintings 

 of the mastiff, they are marked with the white blaze up the 

 face and white legs, also that black was a mastiff colour about 

 1600. In the Glasgow Corporation Galleries of Art is a 

 painting entitled Horse Shoeing, by P. Wouverman, who 

 died in 1668; there is a mastiff" introduced into the picture, 

 with a noble head and white paws, but the picture in its 

 lights and deet> shades reminds the beholder of his contem- 

 porary Rembrandt, who was the son of a miller near Leyden, 

 and he studied scenes of homely life like our own Landseer, 

 and thus represented nature truthfully. 



Sir Robert Sibbald in his work " Scotia Illustrata," 

 mentions the molossus or English mastiff, when enumerating 

 the quadrupeds of Scotland. Strange to say like Caius, 

 Turner, and Gesner, Sir Robert was a physician, and both 

 the church and medical profession have always had a partiality 

 for the mastiff. 



