and power of progress in humanity depend on finding something to reverence, and all the baseness and misery of humanity begin in a habit of disdain. Now, by general misgovernment, I repeat, we have created in Europe a vast populace, and out of Europe a still vaster one, which has lost even the power and conception of reverence; -which exists only in the worship of itself— which can neither see anything beautiful around it, nor conceive anything virtuous above it; which has, towards all goodness and greatness, no other feelings than those of the lowest creatures -fear, hatred, or hunger; a populace which has sunk below your appeal in their nature, as it has risen beyond your power in their multitude;whom you can now no more charm than you can the adder, nor discipline, than you can the summer fly.-C. W. O., IV., § 137.

IOI. THE FLY AND THE WATCH-DOG.-I believe we can nowhere find a better type of a perfectly free creature than in the common house fly. Nor free only, but brave; and irreverent to a degree which I think no human republican could by any philosophy exalt himself to. There is no courtesy in him; he does not care whether it is king or clown whom he teases; and in every step of his swift mechanical march, and in every pause of his resolute observation, there is one and the same expression of perfect egotism, perfect

independence and self-confidence, and conviction of the world's having been made for flies. Strike at him with your hand; and to him, the mechanical fact and external aspect of the matter is, what to you it would be, if an acre of red clay, ten feet thick, tore itself up from the ground in one massive field, hovered over you in the air for a second, and came crashing down with an aim. That is the external aspect of it; the inner aspect, to his fly's mind, is of a quite natural and unimportant occurrence-one of the momentary conditions of his active life. He steps out of the way of your hand, and alights on the back of it. You cannot terrify him, nor govern him, nor persuade him, nor convince him. He has his own positive opinion on all matters; not an unwise one, usually, for his own ends; and will ask no advice of yours. He has no work to do-no tyrannical instinct to obey. The earthworm has his digging; the bee her gathering and building; the spider her cunning network; the ant her treasury and accounts. All these are comparatively slaves, or people of vulgar business. But your fly, free in the air, free in the chamber-a black incarnation of capricewandering, investigating, flitting, flirting, feasting at his will, with rich variety of choice in feast, from the heaped sweets in the grocer's window to those of the butcher's back-yard, and from the galled place on your cab-horse's back, to the brown spot in the road, from which, as the hoof

disturbs him, he rises with angry republican buzz -what freedom is like his ?

For captivity, again, perhaps your poor watchdog is as sorrowful a type as you will easily find. Mine certainly is. The day is lovely, but I must write this, and cannot go out with him. He is chained in the yard, because I do not like dogs in rooms, and the gardener does not like dogs in gardens. He has no books,-nothing but his own weary thoughts for company, and a group of those free flies whom he snaps at, with sudden ill success. Such dim hope as he may have that I may yet take him out with me, will be, hour by hour, wearily disappointed; or, worse, darkened at once into a leaden despair by an authoritative "No"too well understood. His fidelity only seals his fate; if he would not watch for me, he would be sent away, and go hunting with some happier master: but he watches, and is wise, and faithful, and miserable: and his high animal intellect only gives him the wistful powers of wonder, and sorrow, and desire, and affection, which embitter his captivity. Yet of the two, would we rather be watch-dog, or fly?

Indeed, the first point we have all to determine is not how free we are, but what kind of creatures we are. It is of small importance to any of us whether we get liberty; but of the greatest that we deserve it. Whether we can win it, fate must determine; but that we will be worthy of it, we

may ourselves determine; and the sorrowfullest fate, of all that we can suffer, is to have it, without deserving it.-Q. A., III., § 148-150.

102. WISIE. And my dog Wisie, was he dead too? It seems wholly wonderful to me at this moment that he should ever have died. He was a white Spitz, exactly like Carpaccio's dog in the picture of St. Jerome; and he came to me from a young Austrian officer, who had got tired of him, the Count Thun, who afterwards fell at Solferino. Before the dog was used enough to us, George and I took him to Lido to give him a little sea bath. George was holding him by his forepaws upright among the little crisp breakers. Wisie snatched them out of his hands, and ran at full speed-into Fairyland, like Frederick the Great at Mollwitz. He was lost on Lido for three days and nights, living by petty larceny, the fishermen and cottagers doing all they could to catch him; but they told me he "ran like a hare and leaped like a horse."

At last, either overcome by hunger, or having made up his mind that even my service was preferable to liberty on Lido, he took the deep water in broad daylight, and swam straight for Venice. A fisherman saw him from a distance, rowed after him, took him, tired among the weeds, and brought him to me the Madonna della Salute having been propitious to his repentant striving with the sea.

From that time he became an obedient and affectionate dog, though of extremely self-willed and self-possessed character. I was then living on the north side of St. Mark's Place, and he used to sit outside the window on the ledge at the base of its pillars greater part of the day, observant of the manners and customs of Venice. Returning to England, I took him over the St. Gothard, but found him entirely unappalled by any of the work of Devils on it-big or little. He saw nothing to trouble himself about in precipices, if they were wide enough to put his paws on; and the dog who had fled madly from a crisp sea wave, trotted beside the fall of the Reuss just as if it had been another White Dog, a little bigger, created out of foam.

Reaching Paris, he considered it incumbent upon him to appear unconscious of the existence of that city, or of the Tuileries gardens and Rue Rivoli, since they were not St. Mark's Place ;but, half asleep one evening, on a sofa in the entresol at Meurice's, and hearing a bark in the street which sounded Venetian,-sprang through the window in expectation of finding himself on the usual ledge-and fell fifteen feet to the pavement. As I ran down, I met him rushing up the hotel stairs, (he had gathered himself from the stones in an instant,) bleeding and giddy; he staggered round and round two or three times, and fell helpless on the floor. I don't know if young ladies' dogs faint, really, when they are