8 Chapters on Animals, 



fully cherished the recollection of his lost master, thinking 

 of him when the people in the house little suspected those 

 yearnings of melancholy retrospect. There is nothing in 

 nature so sad as that obscure despair. The dog is high 

 enough in the scale of being to feel the regrets of absence 

 in all their bitterness, yet not high enough to have his 

 anxieties relieved by any word of explanation. Whether 

 his master has gone to the next country, or across the sea, 

 or to Heaven, he has no possible means of ascertaining — 

 he only feels the long sorrow of separation, the aching of 

 the solitary heart, the weariness of hope deferred, the 

 anxiety that is never set at rest. 



So great is their power of loving that we cannot help 

 assigning to dogs — not formally, but in our inward esti- 

 mates — a place distinct from the brute creation generally. 

 . To kill a dog is always felt to be a sort of murder; it 

 is the destruction of a beautiful spirit, and the destruction 

 is the more lamentable for its very completeness. 



When I was a boy I remember crossing a stream in 

 Lancashire just as a workman came to the same place fol- 

 lowed by a sharp-looking little brown terrier dog. It went 

 snuffing about under the roots as such little dogs will, and 

 then the man whistled and it came to him at full speed. 

 He caressed it, spoke to it very kindly but very sadly, and 

 then began to tie a great stone to its neck. 



" What are you doing that for ? " I asked. 



" Because I cannot afford to pay the dog-tax, and 

 nobody else shall have my little Jip." 



Then he threw it into the stream. . . . The man turned 

 away with a pale, hard face, suffering, in that moment, 

 more than he cared to show, and I went my way carrying 

 with me an impression which is even now as strong as 

 ever it was. I felt that what I had witnessed was a 



