respectively put an end to his opponent for ever.

It is well when they content themselves thus; but sometimes a worry will take place. Then, seeing the beloved of your heart in the death-gripes with another dog evidently large enough to devour him, you rush to the rescue; the other gentleman, under the same feelings, does the same. Having, fortunately, a stick, you commence using it with all your force and strength on the back of the other gentleman's dog; the other gentleman, having an umbrella, immediately begins to use it with all his force. and strength in belabouring Roger. Over they go, over and over in the mud, tearing each other like wild-cats, and still, whenever an opportunity occurs, you insinuate a thwack upon the head or rump of the other gentleman's dog; the other gentleman, in like manner, putting in a lick whenever he can upon Roger. This goes on like a whirlwind for a minute or two, you and the other gentleman looking all the while like two blacksmiths alternating their strokes on the anvil, but far too eagerly engaged upon the dogs ever to think for a moment of each other. At length, poor Roger gets yelpingly and discomfitedly away, and you suddenly find yourself planted right opposite a furious military-looking man, who meets your own wrathful face with one quite as wrathful, and seems, in fact, on the point of commencing a not less envenomed combat with yourself.

'Your dog began, sir!'

'No, sir; it was yours!'

'It was yours, sir. My dog never attacks any one.'

'I say it was yours, sir!'

These and such like phrases are exchanged; and it is well if the affair ends by your passing each other much in the same growling, but mutually respectful way, as the

dogs in the former case. Do not be surprised, however, if you should find yourself, two mornings after, planted once more opposite to the military-looking man, with a pistol in your hand, he having the like weapon in his; while a friend, far more concerned for your honour than you are yourself, stands a little aside, prepared to say: 'Make ready-present-fire !'

The attendance of your affectionate Roger is apt to be not less troublesome when you go to make a call. Perhaps, with this intention, you leave him at home, or think you are doing so; but the good faithful creature is so attached, and so fond of a walk, that ten to one he is at your heels before you have got to the end of the street. Poor fellow! what can you do but take him with you? The Dorlings are kind friendly people, particularly Mrs Dorling: they will not take it amiss if I bring in honest Roger. So to the door of the Dorlings you go, and finding Mrs D. at home, you are ushered into the drawing-room. To do you justice, you would not have allowed Roger to come in with you if the day had been wet, and the streets dirty; but the day being dry, and the streets clean, you can see no harm he can do. You have altogether forgotten that Mrs Dorling keeps a cat- -a favourite Tom, almost as large as Roger himself, and who always sits on the hearth-rug, an object of great veneration to the family, and the wonder of visitors. The moment, then, that you enter the room, Roger and Tom become mutually aware of each other's presence. Tom gets up his back and his tail, jumps upon the sofa, and spits and screams like one possessed. Roger, good innocent creature, makes no manifestation of hostility whatever; but Mrs Dorling is, nevertheless, alarmed in the extremest degree, and,

in her frenzied fear, gets upon the sofa also, and making an adroit use of her nether-garments, smothers up Tom under a shield more manifold than that of Ajax, deliriously shouting and crying at the same time to you to take away that frightful monster. You instantly seize Roger, and, taking him down stairs-poor fellow, he goes as meekly as a lamb !-you put him gently out at the door, and return by yourself to apologise for the disturbance. Mrs Dorling, a really kind and friendly woman, receives your apologies with a rueful suavity, which marks only too truly how much she has been discomposed, and for some minutes Tom gets much more of her conversation than you. At length, all irritation is smoothed away, and the conversation begins to get into a pleasant strain, when you begin, through the subsiding storm, to hear an impetuous scratching at the outer door, accompanied by a short impatient yelp and whine, such being the mode which worthy Roger has adopted of making the inmates aware that he regrets being separated from his master. Mrs Dorling evidently has heard it too, and a shade of anxiety passes over her face, which you have no difficulty in tracing to a freshly-laid coat of mahogany colour, which you remember observing on the door between the ringing of the bell and the coming of the servant, and which you thought remarkably well executed. You instantly, of course, descend again, and getting Roger confined in an outhouse or cellar, think you have at length secured peace. But scarcely has the conversation been well resumed, when you hear such a burst of yelping and howling as might awake the dead; this being the remonstrance which the affectionate creature thinks proper to make against your cruelty in locking him up. You

now see the day is against you. Off you must go, to relieve Roger from his confinement, and Mrs Dorling from an annoyance such as even her good-nature can scarcely speak of in civil terms.

Dogs are but dogs, and it is canine as well as human to err. Roger was originally a good moral dog, or at the utmost never was known in his early days to steal more than a bone. But keeping bad company is ruinous to both quadrupeds and bipeds. He has the misfortune to become acquainted with a dog of rather wild character in the neighbouring street, and begins to be a good deal out at night. You are at first in no fear for his youthful innocence, but by and by you apprehend that all is not right. You observe that, in the mornings, after any of his nocturnal rambles, he has a remarkably worn-out debauched look, and is not so ready for his walk on those forenoons as usual. You fear he is a misled dog, but you cannot imagine in what way he has been misled. At length, some fine morning, the awful fact comes out. Roger is discovered to have acquired from his wicked companion an unhappy tendency to chase and worry the sheep in a neighbouring park. He and his companion were this morning detected at their unhallowed sport, with eight dead sheep strewed around them, and other two just expiring in their hands. Being marked and recognised as your dog, and traced home to his quarters, there can be no doubt of his guilt. You are of course expected to pay for the ten sheep worried this morning, as well as for all those which have been worried during the past two months; and you are further called upon to surrender him as a malefactor, that the laws of his country may be executed upon him. It is vain to remonstrate. It is clear he is guilty.

.

Affection has many struggles, and you attribute the whole mischief to his wicked friend. But there is no remedy, no alternative. The most you can do for the unfortunate victim of bad company is to pay a policeman half-a-guinea that he may not be hanged ignominiously or cruelly, but put out of existence in a scientific way, by means of prussic-acid. And so ends the story of your dearly beloved Roger, leaving you full of Byronic reflections on the wringing of tender affections, and deeply impressed with the maxim of the noble poet, that love and woe are one thing.

A number of minor evils beset the gentle heart that indulges in an attachment to a dog. For example, no whitened floor can long be kept clean where he is. He walks unthinkingly across large washings, and lies down with wet and dirty sides upon the lambs-wool mat at the parlour door. Newly-raked garden-ground assumes under his feet an appearance which a geologist might prize, if the soil were a clay of the secondary formation, and he an undescribed genus of the Chelonia, but which -the circumstances being as they are the gardener is apt to take very testily. On one account and another, he is scolded, complained of, and absolutely ill used every hour of the day; which you naturally feel to be just the same thing as if you were scolded, complained of, and absolutely ill used yourself. The sufferings which a man thus endures out of affection for a poor dumb animal, that only can wag its tail in his face and lick his hands occasionally, are altogether quite remarkable. It presents both the affections and the patience of our nature in a striking point of view. Upon a review of the whole case, I feel inclined to say that, if men manifested the same resignation under unavoidable calamities and annoyances