The beauty of one dog, the ugliness of
another, and of all the utmost development of
the individual peculiarities of the species to
which they belonged, would seem to have been
the causes operating with the judges. Some
prizes are to be won by size, by depth of chest,
by clean finish of limb, and symmetry of points:
as in the case of the setter, the retriever, the
greyhound, the pointer. Meanwhile, to be
bandy, blear-eyed, pink-nosed, blotchy, under-
hung, and utterly disreputable, is the bull-dog's
proudest boast. The bloodhound's skin should
hang in ghastly folds about his throat and jaws,
with a dewlap like a bull. The King Charles's
spaniel wears a fringe upon his legs like a
sailor's trousers, and has a nose turned up so
abruptly that you could hang your hat upon it
if it were not so desperately short. The prize
terrier wins because he weighs two pounds and
three-quarters, and the boar-hound wins because
he would (to look at him) turn the balance with
a Shetland pony in the other scale. Truly, the
qualifications of dogs are numerous, and very
various their claims on our admiration. We
give a medal to a Cuban hound for tearing down
a fugitive slave, and to an Italian greyhound for
wearing a paletot and trembling from head to
foot (I saw him) when a fly enters his cage.

It is a great comfort not to understand a
subject. When I enter a friend's garden, and sniff
and stare about me, how I enjoy the perfume
and the colours of his flowers, what memories of
childish days they awaken, and how grateful and
happy I feel. The Scotch gardener has another
Scotch gardener, and friend, to see him, and
together they go the rounds of the beds. They
only think whether this is a good "specimen,"
whether that is "doubled," or the other equal to
the example exhibited by Mr. Dibble at the
recent rose-show. How contentedly my friend
Corker refreshes himself with that claret, which
a connoisseur would pronounce undrinkable;
how happily he sits behind that carriage-horse
with the disgraced knees.

Now, if I had understood dogs, what sort of a
visit would mine have been to the show? I
should, like the Scotch gardeners, have gone
about comparing "specimens," and carping, as
I heard many wiseacres do, at the decisions of
the judges. What time should I have had for
speculating as to the respective sensations of
the winning and losing competitors? What
opportunities for twisting a look of
disappointment out of the features of one dog,
and a look of triumph out of another?

Should I, again, if I had understood dogs, have
derived the pleasure I did derive from
discovering that the prize terrier, which was about the
size of a rat, was the property of an immensely
big man, and so instantly darting off to the
conclusion that all the little dogs belonged to
big men and all the big dogs to small men. This
exquisite theory, which no amount of examples
to the contrary will ever shake me out of, would
never have dawned upon me had I been a
dog-fancier. On the contrary, I should have
journeyed about among those delightful animals
entirely blind to their more wonderful qualities.
I should have talked about "a man I knew who
had a pointer that could lick any dog in the place
into fits;" or I might even have gone the length
of remarking that if "Manger of Stayleybridge
had sent that bitch of his, she would have taken
the shine out of any of 'em." A propos of the
fox-hounds, I should have related extraordinary
performances in a run with the Quorn hounds
after a certain vixen-fox, which the whipper-in
said was a dog-fox the moment it broke away,
but which "I knew was a vixen-fox, and so it
turned out." Before the pointers, I should have
discoursed again of shooting, and should,
perhaps, have gone the length of saying, "Ah,
many's the day's shooting I've had with that
very dog, for I always go over in September to
Sir Thomas's, and a capital cover it is. Here,
Ponto, Ponto." Ponto would, perhaps, have
failed to recognise me, and, perhaps, would have
rewarded my caresses with an attempted snap,
but still I should have gone on in the same way,
and even the old spotted spaniel of the
story-book illustrations, a spotted spaniel
would have been to me, and "nothing more."

That Clumber spaniel is unquestionably the
old original dog of one's childhood. One's first
acquaintance with the canine species was made
through the agency of the coloured story-book,
and it was one of those spaniels which figured
on the page. His name was Dash, and the tan
spots were dabbed on in water-colour so boldly
that they bulged in many places over the
outline of the animal's form, and covered portions
of the background (not to say miles of remote
prospect) to which they were but indifferently
appropriate. But it is not entirely owing to
ancient associations that these dogs are so
attractive; they are really most beautiful and
rare animals. A dog is a great bore; he howls
in the night; he is tiresome to feed; he wants
to go out when you have somewhere to go on
business and cannot take him, on which
occasions to see him with his head on one side
looking after you as you shut him up is enough to
break your heart; he is disliked by your friends
whose carpets he impairs and whose cat he
frightens; he is liable to be stolen, and to catch
distempers and other diseases— in short, he is
altogether a heavy handful, but still, if any one
were to offer me one of those real old-fashioned
spaniels, I hardly think I could refuse the gift.

And if these Clumber spaniels are full of old
associations, so also is a curly-haired liver-
coloured retriever. To see one of these dogs is
to think of some old squire in the country who,
as he makes his rounds about his gardens and
farms, armed with a walking-staff with a
spud at the end of it, is sure to have a
super-annuated retainer of this sort at his heels.
A good dog he has been in his time, but he is
now past his work, and so is admitted as a
privileged animal to the drawing and dining-
rooms, is fed with bits of biscuit after dinner,
and listens to all the squire's stories, and to the
directions which he gives to the gardeners and
the farm-labourers.