THE BULL-DOG. 163 



blackguard's dog as the lurcher is the poacher's. The New- 

 foundland dog will save the drowning man, the sheep-dog guard 

 the flock, and the coach-dog gratify the eye by its elegance and 

 sprightliness ; but the bull- dog rival of Cerberus will merely 

 exhibit its surliness or its savage battles. In short, it has no 

 claim to our admiration ; not one pleasant association connected 

 with it. Think of a bull-dog and what else occurs to the mind, 

 but an assemblage of thieves and gamblers goading one dog on 

 against another in some secluded part of the town, or setting 

 one or more of these dogs upon a bull in some country meadow. 

 Some easy people deceive themselves into the notion that such 

 scenes of brutality have ceased since the establishment of the 

 rural and metropolitan police and of the Society for the Pre- 

 vention of Cruelty to Animals ; but, from Whitechapel in the 

 east, to Bayswater in the west of the metropolis, there are yet 

 arenas for the sport of bull- dog fighting. While the Society 

 are continually bringing to punishment poor men for overloading 

 or over- working their donkeys, even under such circumstances 

 of distress as render the offence somewhat excusable, they seem 

 to shut their eyes to the cruel amusements of the dog-fighting 

 gentry of Bayswater, and the badger-baiting military of Woolwich. 

 But poor venders of coal and turf are more easily summoned 



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