122 DOGS. 



admiration and affection. To what other species could we look 

 for voluntary association with our fortunes ? Which of them 

 would, like the dog, lend us the full use of senses so acute as 

 his ? Which other can rejoice in our joy, be vigilant and bold 

 in our defence, obedient to order, faithful in our adversity, 

 understand our least words and signs, and die on our graves 

 from pure attachment ? These qualities, we all know, dogs 

 possess. Here, then, we find the source of that consideration 

 which is granted them by all men near a state of nature ; and 

 although conceded by them with niggardly hands, the wild man 

 of the Old World, the stoical hunter of the New, the half-frozen 

 Esquimaux, and the savage of Australia, differ only in their 

 mode of acknowledgment from the expressions of favour with 

 which the drover, the shepherd, the sportsman, and the fine 

 lady of civilized society, regard them. 



" As the dog alone, of all the brute creation, voluntarily asso- 

 ciates himself with the condition of man's existence, it is fair 

 to presume also, that he was the first, and, therefore, the oldest 

 of man's companions ; that to his manifold good qualities the 

 first hunters were indebted for their conquest and subjugation 

 of other species. We do even now perceive, notwithstanding 

 the advance of human reason, and the progress of invention, 

 that, in a thousand instances, we cannot dispense with his 

 assistance. 



" If we still feel the importance of his services in our state of 

 society, what must have been the admiration of man, when, 

 in the earliest period of patriarchal life, he was so much nearer 

 to a state of nature r When the wild hunter first beheld the 

 joyous eyes of his voluntary associate, and heard his native howl 

 modulated into barking j when he first perceived it assuming 

 tones of domestication, fit to express a master's purposes, and 

 intonate the language which we still witness cattle, sheep, and 

 even ducks and hawks, learn to understand: what exultation 

 must he have felt when, with the aid of his new friend, he 

 was enabled to secure and domesticate the first kid and the first 

 lamb of the mountain race! When, with greater combinations 



