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ments from hand to mouth, as it were, while yet six-weeks invitations were not. Now, I have noticed that in some parties where we were all precise and sensible, ice-bound under some indefinable stiff restraint, some little domestic contretemps, if frankly acknowledged by the hostess, has suddenly unloosed tongues and hearts in a supernatural manner :

"The upper air bursts into life,"

waiters: foot-women as it were. I have weighed | we read of the life of her contemporary, Madame both sides of the subject well in my mind, before de Sevigné, we see that impromptu expedients sitting down to write this paper, and my verdict were necessary in those times, when the thought goes in favor of men; for, all other things being of the morning made the pleasure of the eveequal, their superior strength gives them the ning, and when people snatched their enjoypower of doing things without effort, and consequently with less noise than any woman. The quiet ease and solemn soundless movement of some men-servants is wonderful to watch. Last summer I was staying in a house served by such list-shod, soft-spoken, velvet-handed domestics. One day the butler touched a spoon with a fork; the master of the house looked at him as Jupiter may have looked at Hebe, when she made that clumsy step. "No noise, sir, if you please ;" and we, as well as the servant, were hushed into the solemn stillness of the room, and were graced and genteel, if not merry and sociable. Still, bursts and clashes, and clatters at the side-table, do disturb conversation; and I maintain that for avoiding these, men-servants are better than women. Women have to add an effort to the natural exercise of what strength they possess before they can lift heavy things-surloins of beef, saddles of mutton, and the like; and they cannot calculate the additional force of such an effort, so down come the dish and the mutton and all, with a sound and a splash that surprises us even more than the Phillis, who is neat handed only when she has to do with things that require delicacy and lightness of touch, not struggle of

arm.

And, now I think of it, Mademoiselle de Sablé must have taken the White Cat for her model; there must evidently have been the same noiseless ease and grace about the movements of both -the same purring, happy, inarticulate moments of satisfaction, when surrounded by pleasant circumstances, must have been uttered by both. My own mouth has watered before now at the account of that fricassee of mice prepared especially for the White Cat; and M. Cousin alludes more than once to Madame de Sable's love for "friandises." Madame de S. avoided the society of literary women, and so I am sure did the White Cat. Both had an instinctive sense of what was comfortable; both loved home with tenacious affection; and yet I am mistaken if each had not their own little private love of adventure-touches of the gipsy.

more especially if some unusual expedient had not to be resorted to, giving the whole the flavor and zest of a pic-nic. Toasting bread in a drawing-room, coaxing up a half-extinguished fire by dint of brown sugar, newspapers, and pretty good-for-nothing bellows, turning a packing-case upside down for a seat, and covering in with a stray piece of velvet; these are, I am afraid, the only things that can call upon us for unexpected exertion, now that all is arranged and rearranged for every party a month beforehand. But I have lived in other times, and other places. I have been in the very heart and depths of Wales; within three miles of the house of the high sheriff of the county, who was giving a state-dinner on a certain day, to which the gentleman with whom I was staying was invited. He was on the point of leaving his house in his little Norwegian carriole, and we were on the point of sitting down to dinner, when a man rode up in hot haste-a servant from the high sheriff's came to beg for our joint off the spit. Fish, game, poultry-they had all the delicacies of their own land; but the butcher from the nearest market town had failed them, and at the last moment they had to send off a groom a-begging to their neighbors. My relation departed ignorant of our dinnerless state, but he came back in great delight with his party. After the soup and fish had been removed, there had been a long pause (the joint had got cold on its ride, and had to be re-warmed); a message was brought to the host, who had immediately confided his perplexity to his guests, and put it to the vote whether The reason why I think Madame de Sablé they would wait for the joint, or have the order had this touch in her is because she knew how of the courses changed, and eat the third before "tenir un salon." You do not see the connection the second. Every one had enjoyed the merry between gipsyism and the art of being a good dilemma; the ice was broken, and all went on hostess, of receiving pleasantly. I do; but I pleasantly and easily in a party where there was am not sure if I can explain it. In the first rather a heterogeneous mixture of politics and place, gipsies must be people of quick impulse opinions. Dinner parties in those days and in and ready wit; entering into fresh ideas and new that part of Wales were somewhat regulated by modes of life with joyous ardor and energy, and the arrival of the little sailing vessels, which fertile in expedients for extricating themselves having discharged their cargo at Bristol or Livfrom the various difficulties into which their erpool, brought back commissioned purchases wandering life leads them. They must have a for the different families. A chest of oranges lofty disregard for " convenances," and yet a power of graceful adaptation. They evidently have a vivid sense of the picturesque, and a love of adventure, which, if it does not show itself in action, must show itself in sympathy with other's doings. Now, which of these qualities would be out of place in Madame de Sablé ? From what VOL. VI. 9

DXXX.

LIVING AGE.

for Mr. Williams, or Mr. Wynn, was a sure sig nal that before many days were over, Mr. Williams .or Mr. Wynn would give a dinner-party; strike while the iron was hot; eat while the oranges were fresh. A man rode round to all the different houses when any farmer planned such a mighty event as killing a cow,

to ask what part each family would take. Vis-tea-table in comparative darkness in the twilight iting acquaintances lived ten or twelve miles near the window, and helped ourselves, and came from each other, separated by bad and hilly roads; back on tiptoe to hear one of the party tell of the moon had always to be consulted before issu- wild enchanted spicy islands in the Eastern Aring invitations: and then the mode of proceeding chipelago, or buried cities in farthest Mexico; was usually something like this. The invited he used to look into the fire, and draw, and paint friends came to dinner at half-past five or six; with words in a manner perfectly marvellous, these were always those from the greatest dis- and with an art which he had quite lost at the tance, the nearer neighbors came later on in formal dinner-time. Our host was scientific; a the evening. After the gentlemen had left the name of high repute; he too told us of wonderdining-room, it was cleared for dancing. The ful discoveries, strange surmises, glimpses into fragments of the dinner, prepared by ready cooks, something far away and utterly dream-like. His served for supper; tea was ready sometime towards son had been in Norway, fishing; then, when he one or two, and the dancers went merrily on till sat all splashed with hunting, he too could tell a seven or eight o'clock breakfast, after which of adventures in a natural racy way. The girls, they rode or drove home by broad daylight. I busy with their heavy kettle, and with their tea was never at one of these meetings, although making, put in a joyous word now and then. staying in a house from which many went; I At dinner the host talked of nothing more intelwas considered too young; but from what I ligible than French mathematics; the heir drawlheard they were really excessively pleasant, soci-ed out an infinite deal of nothing about the able gatherings, although not quite entitled to be "Shakspeare and musical glasses" of the day; classed with Madame de Sable's salons. the traveller gave us latitudes and longitudes, and rates of population, exports and imports, with the greatest precision; and the girls were as pretty, helpless, inane fine ladies as you would wish to see.

To return to the fact that a slightly gipsy and impromptu character, either in the hostess or in the arrangements, or in the amusements, adds a piquancy to the charm; let any one remember the agreeable private teas that go on in many Speaking of wood fires, reminds me of Mahouses about five o'clock. I remember those in dame de Sable's fires. Of course they were of one house particularly, as remarkably illustrat- wood, being in Paris; but I believe that even if ing what I am trying to prove. These teas were she had lived in a coal country she would have held in a large dismantled school-room, and a burned wood by instinctive preference, as a lady superannuated school-room is usually the most I once knew always ordered a lump of cannel doleful chamber imaginable. I never saw this coal to be brought up if ever her friends seemed by full daylight, I only know that it was lofty silent and dull. A wood-fire has a kind of spiritand large, that we went to it through a long gal-ual, dancing, glancing life about it. It is an lery library, through which we never passed at any elfish companion, crackling, hissing, bubbling: other time, the school-room having been accessible throwing out beautiful jets of vivid many-colored to the children in former days by a private stair- flame. The best wood-fires I know are those at casc that great branches of trees swept against Keswick. Making lead-pencils is the business the windows with a long plaintive moan, as if of the place; and the cedar chips for scent, and tortured by the wind,—that below in the stable- the thinnings of the larch and fir plantations yard two Irish stag-hounds sent up their musical thereabouts for warm and brilliant light, make bays to mingle with the outlandish Spanish which such a fire as Madame de Sablé would have dea parrot in the room continually talked out of the lighted in. darkness in which its perch was placed,-that the Depend upon it too, every seat in her saloon walls of the room seemed to recede as in a dream, was easy and comfortable of its kind. They and, instead of them, the flickering firelight paint- might not be made of any rare kind of wood, ed tropical forests or Norwegian fiords, accord-nor covered very magnificently, but the bodies ing to the will of our talkers. I know this tea of her friends could rest and repose in them in was nominally private to the ladies, but that all easy unconstrained attitudes. No one can be the gentlemen strayed in most punctually by ac- agreeable, perched on a chair which does not afcident, that the fire was always in that state ford space for proper support. I defy the most when somebody had to poke with the hard blows accomplished professional wit to go on uttering of despair, and somebody else to fetch in logs of "mots" in a chair with a stiff hard upright back, wood from the basket outside, and somebody else or with his legs miserably dangling. No! Mato unload his pockets of fir-bobs, which last were dame de Sable's seats were commodious, and always efficacious, and threw beautiful dancing probably varied to suit all tastes; nor was there lights far and wide. And then there was a black anything in the shape of a large and cumbrous kettle, long ago too old for kitchen use, that article of furniture placed right in the middle of leaked, and ran, and sputtered against the blue her room, so as to prevent her visitors from and sulphur-colored flames, and did everything changing their places, or drawing near to each that was improper, but the water out of which other, or to the fire, if they so willed it. I imamade the best tea in the world, which we drank gine likewise that she had that placid, kindly out of unmatched cups, the relics of several manner which would never show any loss of selfschool-room sets. We ate thick bread and but-possession. I fancy that there was a welcome ter in the darkness with a vigor of appetite which ready for all, even though some came a little had quite disappeared at the well-lighted eight earlier than they were expected. o'clock dinner. Who ate it I don't know, for we stole from our places round the fireside to the

I was once very much struck by the perfect breeding of an old Welsh herbwoman with whom

I drank tea, a tea which was not tea after all,
an infusion of balm and black currant leaves, with
a pinch of lime blossom to give it a Pekoe flavor.
She had boasted of the delicacy of this beverage
to me on the previous day, and I had begged to
be allowed to come and drink a cup with her.
The only drawback was that she had but one
cup, but she immediately bethought her that she
had two saucers, one of which would do just as
well, indeed better than any cup. I was anxious
to be in time, and so I was too early. She had
not done dusting and rubbing when I arrived,
but she made no fuss; she was glad to see me,
and quietly bade me welcome, though I had come
before all was as she could have wished. She
gave me a dusted chair, sate down herself with
her kilted petticoats and working apron, and
talked to me as if she had not a care or a
thought on her mind but the enjoyment of the
present time. By and by, in moving about the
room, she slipped behind the bed-curtain, still
conversing. I heard the splash of water, and a
drawer open and shut; and then my hostess
emerged spruce, and clean, and graced, but not
one whit more agreeable or at her ease than she
had been for the previous half-hour in her work-
ing dress.

46

well prepared for either lot. It might be that wit would come uppermost, sparkling, crackling, leaping, calling out echoes all around; or the same people might talk with all their might and wisdom, on some grave and important subject of the day, in that manner which we have got into the way of calling earnest," but which term has struck me as being slightly flavored by cant, ever since I heard of an earnest uncle." At any rate, whether grave or gay, people did not go up to Madame de Sable's saloons with a set purpose of being either the one or the other. They were carried away by the subject of the conversation, by the humor of the moment. I have visited a good deal among a set of people who piqued themselves on being rational. We have talked what they called sense, but what I called platitudes, till I have longed, like Southey in the Doctor, to come out with some interminable nonsensical word (Aballibogibouganorribo was his, I think), as a relief for my despair at not being able to think of anything more that was sensible. It would have done me good to have said it, and I could have started afresh on the rational tack. But I never did. I sank into inane silence, which I hope was taken for wisdom. One of this set paid a relation of mine a There are a set of people who put on their profound compliment, for so she meant it to be, agreeableness with their gowns. Here, again, I Oh, Miss F.! you are so trite!" But as it is have studied the subject, and the result is that I not in every one's power to be rational, and find people of this description are more pleasant" trite," at all times and in all places, discharg in society in their second-best than in their very best dresses. These last are new; and the persons I am speaking of never feel thoroughly at home in them, never lose their consciousness of unusual finery until the first stain has been made. With their best gowns they put on an unusual fineness of language; they say But I will come back to this presently. Only stead of "begin; " they enquire if they may as- let me say that there is but one thing more tiresist" instead of asking if they may "help" you some than an evening when everybody tries to be to anything. And yet there are some, very far profound and sensible, and that is an evening from vain or self-conscious, who are never so when everybody tries to be witty. I have a disaagreeable as when they have a dim half-defined greeable sense of effort and unnaturalness at both idea that they are looking their best not in times; but the everlasting attempt, even when it finery, but in air, arrangement, or complexion. succeeds, to be clever and amusing, is the worse I have a notion, that Madame de Sablé, with her of the two. People try to say brilliant rather fine instincts, was aware of this, and that there than true things; they not only catch eager hold were one or two secrets about the furniture and of the superficial and ridiculous in other persons, disposition of light in her saloon which are lost and in events generally, but from constantly lookin these degenerate days. I heard, or read, late-ing out for subjects for jokes, and "mots," and ly, that we make a great mistake in furnishing our reception-rooms with all the light and delicate colors, the profusion of ornament, and flecked and spotted chintzes, if we wish to show off the human face and figure; that our ancestors and the great painters knew better, with their somewhat sombre and heavy-tinted back-grounds, relieving or throwing out into full relief the rounded figure and the delicate peach-like complexion.

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ing our sense at a given place, like water from a fireman's hose; and as some of us are cisterns rather than fountains, and may have our stores exhausted, why is it not more general to call in other aids to conversation, in order to enable us to pass an agreeable evening?

satire, they come possessed of a kind of sore susceptibility themselves, and are afraid of their own working selves, and dare not give way to any expression of feeling, or any noble indignation or enthusiasm. This kind of wearying wit is far different from humor, which wells up and forces its way out irrepressibly, and calls forth smiles and laughter, but not very far apart from tears. Depend upon it, some of Madame de Sable's friends had been moved in a most abundant and

I fancy Madame de Sable's saloon was fur-genial measure. They knew how to narrate too. nished with deep warm soberness of tone, light- Very simple, say you? I say, no! I believe the ened up by flowers, and happy animated people, art of telling a story is born with some people, in a brilliancy of dress, which would be lost now- and these have it to perfection; but all might aca-days against our satin walls, and flower-be-quire some expertness in it, and ought to do so, bestrewn carpets, and gilding, gilding everywhere. fore launching out into the muddled, complex, hesThen, somehow, conversation must have flown itating, broken, disjointed, poor, bald accounts of naturally into sense or nonsense, as the case events, which have neither unity, nor color, nor might be. People must have gone to her house life, nor end in them, that one sometimes hears.

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sixth, I rose to come away, a burst of imploring,
indignant surprise greeted me:
You are surely
never going before supper!" I stopped. I ate
that supper. Hot jugged hare, hot roast turkey,
hot boiled ham, hot apple-tart, hot toasted cheese.
No wonder I am old before my time. Now these
good people were really striving, and taking
pains, and laying out money, to make the even-
ing pass agreeably; but the only way they could
think of, to amuse their guests, was, giving them
plenty to eat. If they had asked one of their chil
dren, they could doubtless have suggested half a
dozen games, which we could all have played at
when our subjects of common interest failed, and
which would have carried us over the evening
quietly and simply, if not brilliantly. But in
many a small assemblage of people, where the
persons collected are incongruous, where talking
cannot go on through so many hours, without
becoming flat or labored, why have we not of-
tener recourse to games of some kind?

But as to the rational parties that are in truth so irrational, when all talk up to an assumed character, instead of showing themselves what they really are, and so extending each other's knowledge of the infinite and beautiful capacities of human nature- whenever I see the grave, sedate faces, with their good but anxious expression, I remember how I was once, long ago, at a party like this; every one had brought out his or her wisdom, and aired it for the good of the company; one or two had, from a sense of duty, and without any special living interest in the matter, improved us by telling us of some new scientific discovery, the details of which were all and each of them wrong, as I learnt afterwards: (if they had been right, we should not have been any the wiser:) and just at the pitch when any more useful information might have brought on congestion of the brain, a stranger to the town, a beautiful, audacious, but most feminine romp, proposed a game, and such a game, for us wise men of Gotham! But she (now long still and quiet after her bright life, so full of pretty pranks) was a creature whom all who looked on loved; and with grave hesitating astonishment we knelt round a circular table at her word of command. She made one of the circle, and producing a fea-play them well requires a little more exertion of ther, out of some sofa-pillow, she told us she should blow it up into the air, and whichever of us it floated near, must puff away to keep it from falling on the table. I suspect we all looked like Keeley in the Camp at Cobham, and were surprized at our own obedience to this ridiculous, senseless mandate, given with a graceful imperiousness, as if it were too royal to be disputed. We knelt on, puffing away with the utmost intentness, looking like a set of elderly

"Fools!" No! my dear sir. I was going to say elderly cherubim. But making fools of ourselves, was better than making owls, as we had been doing.

Wit, Advice, Bout-rimês, Lights, Spanish Merchant, Twenty Questions, every one knows these, and many more, if they would only not think it beneath them to be called upon by a despairing hostess to play at them. Of course to

intellect than quoting other people's sense and wisdom, or misquoting science. But I do not think it takes as much thought and memory, and consideration, as it does to be "up" in the science of good eating and drinking. A profound knowledge of this branch of learning seems in general to have absorbed all the faculties before it could be brought to anything like perfection. So I do not consider games as entailing so much mental fatigue as a man must undergo before he is qualified to decide upon dishes. I once noticed the worn and anxious look of a famous dinerout, when called upon by his no less anxious host to decide upon the merits of a salad, mixed by no hands, as you may guess, but those of the host in question. The guest, doctor of the art of good living, tasted, paused, tasted again, and then, with gentle solemnity, gave forth his condemnatory opinion. I happened to be his next neighbor, and slowly turning his meditative full-moon face round to me, he gave me the valuable information that to eat a salad in perfection some one should be racing from lettuce to shallot, from shallot to endive, and so on, all the time that soup and fish were being eaten; that the vegetables should be gathered, washed, sliced, blended, eaten, all in a quarter of an hour. I bowed as in the presence of a master; and felt, no wonder his head was bald, and his face heavily wrinkled.

I will mention another party, where a game of some kind would have been a blessing. It was at a very respectable tradesman's house. We went at half-past four, and found a well-warmed handsome sitting-room, with block upon block of unburnt coal behind the fire; on the table there was a tray with wine and cake, oranges and almonds and raisins, of which we were urged to partake. In half an hour came tea; none of your flimsy meals, with wafer-bread and butter, and three biscuits and a half. This was a grave and serious proceeding tea, coffee, bread of all kinds, cold fowl, tongue, ham, potted meats I don't know what. Tea lasted about an hour, and then the cake-and-wine tray was restored to its former place. The stock of subjects of comI have said nothing of books. Yet I am sure mon interest was getting low, and, in spite of our that if Madame de Sablé lived now, they would good will, long stretches of silence occurred, be seen in her salon as part of its natural indisproducing a stillness which made our host ner-pensable furniture; not brought out, and strewed vously attack the fire, and stir it up to a yet here and there when "company was coming," greater glow of intense heat; and the hostess but as habitual presences in her room, wanting invariably rose at such times, and urged us to eat another maccaroon." The first I revelled in, the second I enjoyed, the third I got through, the fourth I sighed over, the fifth reminded me uncomfortably of that part of Sterne's Sentimental Journey, where he feeds a donkey with maccaroons - and when, at the sight of the

which, she would want a sense of warmth and comfort and companionship. Putting out books as a sort of preparation for an evening, as a means for making it pass agreeably, is running a great risk. In the first place, books are by such people, and on such occasions, chosen more for their outside than their inside. And in the next

they are the "mere material with which wisdom which contained engraved and authentic por(or wit) builds ;" and if persons don't know how traits of almost every possible person; from king to use the material, they will suggest nothing. I and kaiser down to notorious beggars, and crimimagine Madame de Sablé would have the vol- inals; including all the celebrated men, women, umes she herself was reading, or those which, and actors whose likenesses could be obtained. being new, contained matter of present interest, To some, this portfolio gave food for observaleft about, as they would naturally be. I could tion, meditation and conversation. It brought also fancy that her guests would not feel bound before them every kind of human tragedy,-every to talk continually, whether they had anything variety of scenery and costume and gossiping in to say or not, but that there might be pauses of the background, thronged with figures called up not unpleasant silence-a quiet darkness out of by their imagination. Others took them up and which they might be certain that the little stars laid them down, simply saying, "This is a pretty would glimmer soon. I can believe that in such face!" "Oh what a pair of eyebrows!" "Look pauses of repose, some one might open a book, at this queer dress!"" and catching on a suggestive sentence, might Yet, after all, having something to take up dash off again into the full flow of conversation. and to look at, is a relief and of use to persons But I cannot fancy any grand preparations for who, without being self-conscious, are nervous what was to be said among people, each of whom from not being accustomed to society. Oh Casbrought the best dish in bringing himself; and sandra! Remember when you with your rich whose own store of living, individual thought gold coins of thought, with your noble power and feeling, and mother-wit, would be infinitely of choice expression, were set down, and were better than any cut-and-dry determination to de- thankful to be set down, to look at some paltry vote the evening to mutual improvement. If engravings, just because people did not know people are really good and wise, their goodness how to get at your ore, and you did not care a and their wisdom flow out unconsciously, and button whether they did or not, and were rather benefit like sunlight. So, books for reference, bored by their attempts, the end of which you books for impromptu suggestion, but never books never found out. While I, with my rattling tinto serve for texts to a lecture. Engravings fall selly rubbish, was thought "agreeable and an under something like the same rules. To some acquisition!" You would have been valued at they say everything; to ignorant and unprepared Madame de Sable's, where the sympathetic and minds nothing. I remember noticing this in intellectual stream of conversation would have watching how people looked at a very valuable borne you and your golden fragments away with portfolio belonging to an acquaintance of mine, it, by its soft resistless gentle force.

From Bentley's Miscellany.

THE ANT-EATER.

gentleman seemed only to deepen his lethargic slumbers. At length the clock strikes four, and the door opens. At this moment the bundle of WHAT a curious beast! Which is his head, hay unfolds itself, and out stalks monstrum horrenand which is his tail? Surely he has got no dum informe ingens, which monster, nevertheless, mouth! Is that what they call a Python? has been dubbed with the high sounding title of Such were the exclamations I heard when pres- Myrmecophapa jubata, which, being interpreted, ent at one of the first levees given to the British meaneth, the Maned Ant-Eater, uvpuns, an ant, public by Seignor Ant-Eater. The man who payw, to eat. Jubata, from juba, a crest, which thought he was looking at a Python (it was Mon- little lesson reminds us forcibly of former days day, and therefore a sixpenny day) had seen when, trembling with fear of the schoolmaster's outside the building the words "To the Pythons "rose-wood ruler, we mechanically committed to posted up in gigantic type, the card of the stran- our infantine memory the meaning of the word ger not being at that time ready, and therefore Geography.

he came fully prepared to see a python, and Being a distingue among animals, like great nothing but a python. Had he looked at the folks among ourselves, he has more names than "Times" that morning he would have been one. The Indians of Brazil (who rejoice in the aware that an adult example of the giant Ant-crack-jaw appellation of Qjuarani) call him the Eater had been added to the collection."

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Certainly he has been added to the collection, but the addition will appear to those who don't go at the proper time very much like a bundle of hay tumbled into the corner of the den. The ant-eater receives not the public indiscriminately, he is "at home" only at dinner time, at which time, like most of ourselves, he is wide awake and ready for action. The opening of the keeper's door, and the cracking of sundry egg-shells on the side of his tin soup plate, is his dinner bell, and it is quite astonishing to see how soon these welcome sounds awake him, though but five minutes before all the hists, and the heys, and the umbrella stampings of yon old

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Youroumi," which D'Azara tells us signifies in Spanish "Boca Chica," or little mouth. The Portuguese call him "Tamandua," a name equivalent to ant-bear; the French of Cayenne, by the elegant name of Tamanoir; and, lastly, his indulgent keeper at the Zoological, trusting to intimate acquaintanceship, takes the liberty of addressing this many-titled quadruped by the familiar term of "Tit." a name which his highness is condescending enough to "answer to," as the dog-dealer would say.

The appellation of maned, would well suit the animal, if, like the horse at the country fair, his tail were where his head ought to be. The mane is developed, not on his neck and along his back,

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