signs which form his dialect have come to bear an arbitrary meaning, clearly understood both by his master and himself; yet when a new want arises he must either invent a new vehicle of meaning or wrest an old one to a different purpose; and this necessity frequently recurring must tend to lessen his idea of the sanctity of symbols.  Meanwhile the dog is clear in his own conscience, and draws, with a human nicety, the distinction between formal and essential truth.  Of his punning perversions, his legitimate dexterity with symbols, he is even vain; but when he has told and been detected in a lie, there is not a hair upon his body but confesses guilt.  To a dog of gentlemanly feeling theft and falsehood are disgraceful vices.  The canine, like the human, gentleman demands in his misdemeanours Montaigne’s “je ne sais quoi de genereux."[6] He is never more than half ashamed of having barked or bitten; and for those faults into which he has been led by the desire to shine before a lady of his race, he retains, even under physical correction, a share of pride.  But to be caught lying, if he understands it, instantly uncurls his fleece.

Just as among dull observers he preserves a name for truth, the dog has been credited with modesty.  It is amazing how the use of language blunts the faculties of man—–­that because vainglory finds no vent in words, creatures supplied with eyes have been unable to detect a fault so gross and obvious.  If a small spoiled dog were suddenly to be endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for falsehood, in a year’s time he would have gone far to weary out our love.  I was about to compare him to Sir Willoughby Patterne,[7] but the Patternes have a manlier sense of their own merits; and the parallel, besides, is ready.  Hans Christian Andersen,[8] as we behold him in his startling memoirs, thrilling from top to toe with an excruciating vanity, and scouting even along the street for shadows of offence—­here was the talking dog.

It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man.  The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence.  But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature.  Once he ceased hunting[9] and became man’s plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed.  Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected.  The number of things that a small dog does naturally is strangely small.  Enjoying better spirits and not crushed under material cares, he is far more theatrical than average man.  His whole life, if he be a dog of any pretension to gallantry, is spent in a vain show, and in the hot pursuit of admiration.