only another companion, a fellow wrapped
up in a thick great-coat, who refused to
answer a single question that was put to him,
and otherwise conducted himself in a very surly,
unsocial manner: daylight revealed to him that
the misanthrope was a Bear! The creature,
however, except by its silence, had given its
fellow-traveller no offence, and this brings us to
the question of the temper and disposition of
the Bear, reclaimed from the condition "when
wild in woods the hairy savage ran."

Of the docility of the Bear, there are a thousand
instances on record; indeed, one has only
to go to any country fair, to see him made
the showman's plaything—like Samson, he is
brought out to make sport for the Philistines.
Nature has enabled the huge Plantigrade to
stand upright, and Art has been called in to
improve upon Nature. Your well-taught Bear
can shuffle you a saraband, or whirl you a waltz
with as clumsy a grace as any of the rustics
who grin and gaze at him. As a member
of the corps de ballet, he may hold up
his head, or his leg, anywhere; as a singer,
I fear he would prove a failure. Yet the
family voice is not without flexibility, and M.
Agassiz has so far assimilated the cries of
animals to human tongues, as to affirm that it
would be easy to derive the growling of different
species of Bears one from the other, in the
same way and by the same process, that linguists
resort to demonstrate the relation which exists
between Greek and Sanscrit. Careful and
earnest teaching might, therefore, improve the
growl of the Bear till it equalled double-bass;
indeed, we have heard some bassi whose lower
notes might easily have been mistaken for the
untutored utterance of a Bear. But Bruin's
docility is more agreeably exemplified in the
facility with which he adapts himself to the
circumstances of domestic life. Lord Byron's
Bear was not a bad specimen of what may be
achieved by a classical education, and it is said
that this Bear's manners contrasted, not
unfavourably, with those of the Dons of Trinity.
Tiglath Pileser, familiarly called "Tig," was a
Bear of whom the University of Oxford was
justly proud: he wore a regulation cap and
gown, became them as well, and conducted
himself with as much propriety as most
undergraduates. Tig never "sported the oak" to
keep out clamorous creditors; nor is it on record
that he gave wine-parties or got drunk. To
drink wine is, however, a feat which the Bear
can accomplish; for Sir Stamford Raffles, when
in Ceylon, had one, a Malayan Bruang, who
addicted himself to champagne, and would taste no
other fermented liquor—wherein he displayed
much judgment. Mr. Lloyd, the Norwegian
traveller, owned a brace of Brown Bears, which
he had tamed when young, and as they grew up
they became the most gamesome and, as it
were, larkish of animals; if he closed the door
against their importunity, for they were never
easy out of his company, they would make a
forcible entry by the window. How gentle the
Bear can behave, is shown in a story told of a
Siberian Brown Bear, by Mr. Atkinson: "Two
children," he says, "of four and six years of
age, had wandered away from their home, and
were a little time after missed by their parents,
who set out in search of them. To their horror
and astonishment they found their children
engaged in play with a large Bear, which responded
to their infantine advances in a most affectionate
manner. One of the children was feeding its
shaggy playfellow with fruit, while the other
had mounted on its back, and was seated on its
strange steed strong in the fearlessness of
childish ignorance. The parents gave a terrified
scream on seeing the danger to which their
offspring were exposed, and the Bear, on seeing
their approach, quietly turned away and went
into the forest." The negroes in the West
Indies say of the monkeys that they are too cunning
to talk, knowing that if they did they would
inevitably be set to work. Bears, with all their
cultivation, are not so shrewd, or they would
not have submitted without growling to the
tasks imposed upon them by the Indians on
Lake Champlain, who—the period is A.D. 1611
—"have tame Beares, which they teach to carry
them upon trees for want of ladders." This
statement is made on the authority of M. de
Monts, who undertook a voyage and journey of
exploration with the object of piercing through
North America by the river of Canada, "which
the savages call Kebec," to be able to reach one
day to China.

From these few instances, adduced almost at
random, it has been shown that the Bear is
capable of developing as many good qualities
as are generally to be met with in society.
Without absolutely acceding to the doctrine,
which is variously held, that animals have souls,
but leaving it an open question for philosophy—
when wise enough—to determine, we quite agree
with M. Quatrefages, of the French Academy of
Sciences, in thinking that they express
"something" ("quelque chose") which is "fundamentally
characteristic." We understand by this
definition a capacity for feeling and for expressing
feeling in a way that assimilates more or
less nearly to reasoning, according to the
animal's natural endowments, many of them
possessing far higher qualities than others. That
Goethe entertained this idea, or chose to entertain
it, is apparent from the zest he has shown
in describing a Bear in love, and his description
is so amusing, that we cannot do better than
give, in English prose, the substance of the
great German poet's characteristic verse. The
title of his poem is Lili's Park. Lili, a beautiful
young girl, the mistress of a Zoological
Garden, filled with the rarest creatures. Who
the narrator is appears in the course of the
narrative, which runs thus: "There is no
menagerie in the world so variously stocked as that
of my Lili! She has in it the most wonderful
animals, and how she gets them in she herself
does not know! Oh, how they leap, and scurry,
and tramp, flapping away with their clipt wings,
the poor Princes" (transformed, of course) "all
together, in a never-extinguished love-torment!