142 PICTURESQUE ANIMALS. 



of Oriental travellers. As Dugald Stewart has observed, 

 we associate him with the old patriarchs in their jour- 

 neys to new lands ; and we have often seen him forming 

 an important figure in old paintings and engravings. 

 It is not his shaggy coat and uncouth appearance that 

 yield him his picturesque character, so much as the in- 

 teresting scenes and adventures with which his figure is 

 associated. 



The same remarks may be applied with equal propriety 

 to the goat. He is the animal of mountain scenery, and 

 the sight of him brings to mind a variety of romantic in- 

 cidents connected with such landscape. He is often rep- 

 resented as standing on precipitous heights and browsing 

 upon dangerous declivities. He is, in fact, one of the dumb 

 heroes of dangerous adventure. With the inhabitants of 

 mountainous countries, as among the Alps and the High- 

 lands of Scotland, the goat is the domesticated animal 

 that supplies them with milk. The hardiness and activity 

 of the goat, his frequent introduction into pictures of 

 Alpine scenery, and his habit of finding sustenance in 

 wild regions and fastnesses where no other animal could 

 live, combine to render his image strongly suggestive of 

 rusticity and the simple habits of mountaineers. 



It is common to regard the uncouthness of the appear- 

 ance of these animals as the quality from which they derive 

 their picturesque expression. It is much more probable 

 that, on account of the absence of beauty of color, smooth- 

 ness, and symmetry, the imagination is left more entirely 

 to the influence of the poetic and traditional images 

 connected with these animals. In this way it may be 

 explained why rudeness is, to a certain extent, a nega- 

 tive picturesque quality, because it leaves the imagina- 

 tion entirely to the suggestions of the scene ; whereas, if 

 it were very beautiful, the mind would be more agreeably 

 occupied in surveying its intrinsic beauties than in dwell- 



