SIR,

I Am unwilling to obtrude on the columns of your widelycirculated Magazine matter entirely irrelevant to the subject it is more particularly devoted to; but if you think the following very LAME account of one of the most remarkable dogs I ever heard of worthy the attention of your readers, you are exceedingly welcome toit, however I mayhall in the recital. There was a time, alas! when after a brush I could " go the pace;" but with a pen in my hand it was ever difficult for me to bestir my stumps, and "dot and go one" was the sum of my proceedings; whilst now I suspect I must speedily lay my account with coming to a full-stop!

I am no dog-fancier, neither am I a naturalist-perhaps I savour more of the natural (which in this country is a very expressive phrase)-but when I see nature developing in a poor dumb creature qualities (I may call them) which we bipeds would do well to imitate oftener than we do, I own I take an interest both in the subject and in the object.

were offered up by Achilles to his myrmidons at the siege of Troy a man, indeed, whose love of dogs approximates almost to a species of canomania, and at whose table-hospitable as it is -one has no chance of seeing that South Sea delicacy, a bowwow pie; and who, though so stricken, has never yet shewn any taint of hydrophobia-for he goes to Spa regularly every morning, makes his tea with water, and never was known to decline a glass of wine:-this friend of mine, I say, was presented by an honest innkeeper of his acquaintance with a dog, something between a terrier and a mastiff, although peradventure there might be the "laste taist in life" of the genuine bull in him: for this dog had an Irish shake of his tail and an expressive leer in his eye when about business, which savoured woundily of the wonderworking and prolific potato; and as to pedigree, we all know the blunders committed in tracing puppies to their sires where bitches are concerned, many passing for golden pippins, who in reality are little better than grafts from crabs. But letting alone his pedigree, this animal shewed nothing particular in his exterior or apparent properties, and was accordingly given away again to the superintendant of a salmon-fishing at the Cruives-a spot, in the vicinity of Aberdeen, famous at once for its romantic beauty, for the miraculous draughts sometimes drank as U u

well as caught at it, and not unknown to fame for the good dinners, brilliant fêtes champetres, and happy marriages, balls, &c. celebrated at it during our Carnival!

Mr. S. the worthy superintendant alluded to, is a person not only extremely attentive to the discharge of his trust, but is also endowed with much curious observation. Study, and his nightly vigils, have not yet reduced him to a skeleton, though his grief for the loss of his favorite dog has certainly, from being a very portly good-looking man, brought him nearer the chance of getting through the eye of a needle. He soon saw something more than common in the dog, which I should long since have told you was christened by the name of Tiger. With that grateful instinct which characterises his race, this sagacious creature began to consider, as it were, how to render himself useful to the kind hand that fed and caressed him; and for that purpose, in constantly attending his master to the water side, saw that fish was the object, and water the element he had to study. Accordingly, although smooth-haired, and without a particle of the spaniel, Newfoundlander, or water-dog in him, he set about swimming and learning to practise all manner of aquatic evolutions, smelling about the nets, and at first fearfully approaching the salmon as they were drawn to shore, and then eager to mouth them. For a while, led only by the sweep of the net, and sight of the corks upbearing it, but by degress, eagerly watching the practised eyes of the fishermen who see long down the stream the approach of fish by a

particular swirl on the surface of the river, immediately over the salmon (imperceptible to any vision but their own), Tiger soon became as expert at this as themselves; and at his warning would they always bestir themselves, and generally with success. Not only did the dog do this, but he went farther-he saw the fish for himself, and took them by himself, without the assistance of man, or material of any kind! At first, as was to be expected, his success was small, but his instinct soon made him expert, and he has been known to kill from twelve to fifteen salmon in a day! In the coldest mornings and the darkest nights, he was, it may be said, never off guard, nor ever so happy as when on it. In a middling river, when the water was not too high, he would place himself for hours together on a stone a little below the rapids, and watch the fish coming up, allow it to pass him, when following it up to the rush at the bottom of the dykes, where it was shallower, pounce at once on his prey, and fixing his teeth a little below the neck, keep fast hold, and struggling with the salmon, sometimes

above water and sometimes below it, go down the stream for a considerable distance, and almost always returning victor. With a high river when in a speat, as we say here, after much rain, he would perch himself on the very edge of the high Cruive dyke, with the water boiling and bubbling about him to his belly, watching the dart upwards of the fish, and, immediately he saw one, spring at it at all hazards till he laid it on the bank, wagging his tail and seemingly more delighted than the fishermen at the

proportion his individual exertions contributed to the general stock.

On one occasion he grappled with an enormous fish of twentythree pounds, sustained a desperate battle with it, and had nearly mastered it, when a fisherman, seeing the struggle, went to Tiger's assistance, laid hold of the salmon by the tail, and before the dog had quitted the gripe, the fish, by a convulsive twist, laid both man and dog on their backs-but fish though it was, that salmon went the way of all flesh.

On another occasion his master had left him at twelve o'clock on a Sunday night, before the fishing commences on Monday morning, chained to his couch. Tiger drew the couch down the bank to the river, and, breaking the chain, killed several salmon ere Mr. S.'s return.

On one particularly stormy night so bad that the fishermen were driven to shelter in a public house hard by-Tiger disdained to quit his spot, and killed of himself seven fish that very night whilst they were solacing them

selves.

If his master was at home, and said, Tiger, there is a fish coming"-off he went, wagging his tail, and either returned sorrowful, or his whiskers garnished with fresh salmon scales in proof of his industry! If the fish was small he would bring it ashore 66 as if he had a tobacco pipe in his mouth," as the fishermen termed it.

It would be endless to recount the thousandth part of the numerous instances of the sagacity, industry, patience, and spirit of this invaluable dog-his affection,

his intelligence I may say, and the unwearied desire he manifested, as it were, to shew his sense of duty to those who supported and were kind to him! And what was his end? Does he yet live, basking in his old age in the sunshine of their favour and protection? I almost shudder with indignation when I write it-this animal, so favoured by Nature, and so distinguished by the dumb attributes of every good quality a poor quadruped could possess, was last week only most inhumanly shot by some miscreant hand, which has not yet been discovered, although a considerable reward has been offered for the detection of the brute who could kill such a dog. Alas, dogs! in how many things do they surpass proud man! I remember me being exceedingly struck at seeing two prints at Paris some dozen of years ago, contrasting two funerals. The one, as it seemed to be of some rich contractor, great Minister of State, or Parvenu millionaire, borne in all the pride, pomp, and glorious circumstance of sweeping tragedy pall, and with all the suits and trappings of wo-ahundred equipages, mutes, (merry) mourners, cambric handkerchiefs, lavender tears, and all the affected grief of a numerous cortege— carrying to his last home some man of an every-day stamp, and undistinguished, perhaps, by any other trait but by that which the caustic Junius once said of Lord Temple-" his adding but another unit to the Bills of Mortality!" And the other-the funeral d'un pauvre! laid in a shell hardly covered, "all alone in his glory," carried to that bourne from which no traveller returns-where

all will be held equal, all judged of by the deeds done in the flesh, whether Lords or Law-givers, Kings, conquerors, beggars, and Buonapartes-was attended only in death by the poor creature that shared his crust while living -his faithful Dog!! Yet this poor man-I say it to you, ye proud and disdainful of the earth-though he might have been poor and wretched, and followed only by the contemptuous disregard of those of happier stars in this world; yet, if his heart beat true, and his mind, though uneducated, naturally inclined him to the charities and kindness of our common nature, as exemplified even to his dog, however privation and distress might have sometimes laid him to sin and error, may, at the dread rising of the curtain, obtain a seat of everlasting joy and peace whilst the proud, the calculating, over-reaching, more fortunate, but less feeling souls, lay howling-as dogs do when punished!

I did not mean to end in this sancto-heroic vein; but this is an age of inspiration! wonderful in every respect. There seems a cholera of mind as well as of body to pervade the whole human race just now; and, what with sectarian mystification, religious toleration, and political rancour, there

seems a chance of the world becoming an universal mad house! No wonder many people are tired of it! "There is another and a better world," was the dying exclamation of poor John Palmer on the mimic stage; and 'tis well men's consciences lead them to doubt the place the best of them will obtain in the next, else Charon might tire at his ferry!

I wonder if there are any salmon in the Styx? and if poor Tiger could there, "like a brother of the angle," exercise his "gentle craft?" Alas! poor dog!. vale et plaudite!-CURnon! Never, never, shall we look upon his like! and, if his assassin should ever be discovered, he shall be d-d to endless fame.

Yours, &c.

SNARL,

I forgot to tell you that "he had a fine eye for a duck;" and, if he had been as near St. Stephen's as he was to Mr. Stephen (his kind master), the devil a rat would have escaped him, even though they soaped their tails, with all the specious humbug your ---8; and when shame drives them to seek " flattering unction as embrocations for apostacy! Now, I leave you to imagine whether the writer is for or against Reform. You'll may be answer-Davus, non Epidus sum!

SIR,

man

66

ing to common neatness in his dress and appearance a person who, perhaps, but for one occurrence which I am about to relate, might never have arrived at any celebrity, much less (a local one at least in those days) a notoriety, which, connected as it was with Royalty itself, rendered the worthy Parson of Frampton a personage, whom, to be any time in the county of Dorset, and not to have been pointed out to you, as one on whom a high stamp had been set, was impossible. Whether the Doctor, as His Majesty dubbed him, has accompanied his friendly Sovereign and benefactor beyond that stream which neither Prince nor Parson have ever yet been known to recross, I am ignorant; but if he has not, I shall only relate what I know, and what, as it never did (for it was in all men's mouths at the time), neither can it now, prejudice or offend the worthy individual whose unanswerable singularities (at least some of them) I intend to detail.

Soon after the Prince commenced hunting from Critchell, in a very greasy day after the breaking up of a frost, His Highness was getting along the precipitous side of a woodland hanging (the fox just halloo'd away), when his horse's legs almost all at once went from under him. The nag was, however, as quickly picked up by the Prince as a horse could be; when Parson Butler, a man of more than just met the eye, and who happened at the instant to be right in the Royal rear, floun dered past "the Hopes of the Nation" just as he was in the very crisis of his dilemma, kicking the mud gallantly in his face

with true fox-hunting equality, and roaring out as he passed them, "Well saved, by George*, your Royal Highness!" The Prince was at that time a man who did not mind having the dirt kicked in his face on such an occasion, especially when it came in a fair way, and was not done by those who should have known better; but such riding being rather unusual in the Hunt, and the concomitant remark, pronounced in the true vernacular of the county in which his Reverence luxuriated, it did not escape the Royal penetration.

As soon as circumstances permitted, inquiry was made after the splashing commentator on His Highness's plucking-up qualities, and the Doctor (as he was ever after designated in the establishment at Critchill) was, by particular desire, lugged forward to make his (anything but a) bow, and, "all unadorned as he was,' and always was, but "nothing loth," taken back to Critchill. His Highness at once saw that he had found one who would be no mean source of mirth: but if the Princely sportsman did amuse himself a little with his eccentricities, it was in such a manner as the Doctor had no reason to feel sore about, as, I think, will be seen in the sequel.