rily engaged in some drinking-place, recovers from his orgy and misses his equipage, he is pretty well aware of the locality in which he must search for it. As soon, therefore, as he presents himself to the Contrôleur, he is required to assist at the minute professional examination to which both vehicle and quadruped are submitted before they can be restored to him or allowed to be again used for the public service. If the horse be found by the veterinary-surgeon attached to the institution to be diseased, worn out, or unfit for use, the driver is obliged to replace him before again plying for hire; and should the wheelwright employed to test the condition of the carriage, pronounce it unsafe, he is compelled to have it properly repaired; if beyond repair, it is condemned and broken up.

To the kennel we next turn our attention, invited by the pitiable wailings of the wretched captives detained there, though, alas! powerless to help them. It is to the tender mercies of the équarrisseur that the poor brutes are entrusted, and he it is who undertakes to do the honours of his department to visitors. He unlocks their prisondoor, then opens it cautiously, looks in, and having ascertained that none of the occupants are at large, enters and admits us, carefully closing the door again. We find ourselves in a paved court consisting of two compartments along the walls of both, on either side, are built rows of cages divided by wooden partitions; they are of limited dimensions, especially in proportion to the size of some of the inmates. All these are chained; and the accumulated howlings, wailings, barkings, and bayings, which have been proceeding on a crescendo scale since our entrance, now constitute a turmoil absolutely bewildering.

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The dogs we see (and hear)' are

VOL. VIII-NO. XLIV. NEW SERIES.

drawn from all quarters of Paris, and comprise, in fact, all canine flâneurs found loitering homeless and purposeless in the streets of this dangerous capital; even those lucky dogs who have a servant to wait on them, who live on dainties, sit on cushions, and ride in carriages

should they take it into their heads to enjoy their liberty, and walk out unattended, are, whenever they escape the vigilance of the dogstealer, liable to the common fate: neither is any more respect shown to the liberty of those grave, business-like dogs, who trot along the streets, never hesitating as to which turning they shall take, with an air of self-reliance so pronounced that it is impossible not to believe they are bent on some important errandeven these are relentlessly arrested, and, all protests notwithstanding, are borne off to the Rue de Pontoise: once there they are submitted to the scrutiny of a competent judge, who pronounces to which category each is to be consigned. Some of these canine captives are so handsome, so well-bred, and so unquestionably dogs of birth, that the merest glance suffices to certify their patrician descent, and therefore to determine the treatment they are to receive. Those who can lay claim to the privileges of class are shown to a cell constructed with some view to comfort and sanitary considerations. The floor is of stone, and is made to slope at a slight incline; it is also covered with clean litter, and each pensioner is provided with a tin bowl containing a not very liberal allowance of bones, and a basin of water. This scanty and simple fare, doled out to dogs of the first category only, serves to keep them alive during the eight days they occupy the chénil.

During this interval it is competent for their masters to apply for and recover them; but, alas! unless

R

they represent absolute money value, these faithful creatures await too often in vain the reciprocal fidelity and solicitude of their masters.

Every Parisian who loses a valuable dog-after, of course, in the first instance, suspecting he must have been robbed of it-repairs to the Fourrière in the forlorn hope that the animal may have been picked up by the police and carried thither. If such be the case, and he be desirous of recovering him, all he has to do is to describe the dog, prove his ownership, pay the expenses incurred, and obtain restitution.

From a variety of causes, however, it happens that many of even the more valuable dogs are not called for within the prescribed period; a sale therefore takes place every Sunday morning, when they are disposed of to the highest bidder. A written attestation is handed to the purchaser declaring the conditions under which he has obtained the dog, and protecting him from all pursuit on the part of the former

owner.

The system of dog-stealing has, of course, been as carefully and successfully cultivated in Paris as in London; we are not therefore surprised to learn that the Fourrière was at one time exposed to frequent raids from the clever fraternity who practise it. Among the tricks by which they managed to cheat the officials, the most frequent appears to have been that known in thieves' slang by the name of grinchissage. The grinchisseurs always hunt in couples, and their plan was this. One of them would call at the bureau and politely request permission to look round the kennel, in the hope of finding there a dog he had just lost. Casting his practised eye over the collection, and while regretting that his missing pet should have fallen a prey to those rascally dog-stealers,' he would be taking advantage of the opportunity

to note all the points in any valuable dog that might happen to be confined there; then, regretting the trouble he had given, he would withdraw. Next day came the second, who followed up the game by announcing the loss of a favourite dog, and expressing the hope that it might have been brought there by the police; 'perhaps,' adds he, ‘you could tell me whether you have one answering such and such a description.' Several robberies were thus effected; but at length the dodge' was discovered, and a new regulation, founded upon it, was framed, by which no applicant is allowed access to the kennel until he has given a written description of the dog he has come to seek. To this document he must append his name and address, together with that of a respectable referee, should the 'administration' see any reason to require it.

During our visit, a woman servant was admitted to inspect the inmates of the kennel with a view to the recovery of her master's little dog, which had been missing since the day previous. Unfortunately for her, it appeared to have found its way into other hands, and so the Contrôleur at once concluded on hearing the description.

'C'était, monsieur,' she said mournfully, une si jolie petite bête! Hélas, si vous saviez-et gentil, êt docile, et fidèle! Ah, mon Dieu,' she continued with a deep sigh, 'un petit mouton noir tout frisé-mais frisé—'

‘Ah, ma foi,' replied the Contrôleur, un mouton noir tout frisé, vous sentez bien, ça ne se perd pas ; ça se vole; mais un animal de cette espèce, ça doit aller dans les trois cents francs.'

'C'est que c'est vrai ce que vous dites là, monsieur; ça valait bien ce que vous dites, et puis le patron l'aimait tant

Ah, mon Dieu, que voulez-vous?

Il fallait le garder à la maison; tout de même, si par hasard il trouvait le chemin de la fourrière, soyez tranquille, on vous le fera savoir tout de suite.'

The poor girl, however, seemed to attach but little hope to this issue, and went away with tears in her eyes.

Per contra, a fine frisky, livercoloured setter was brought in, and attracted general admiration from the officials: as there was no doubt as to his value, a place was unhesitatingly assigned him in the rank of the aristos.

As for the poor brutes condemned to the cells of the second category, their condition is a very hard one, and they rarely re-cross the fatal threshold of their dungeon. Nor is this all three days constitute the term of their miserable lives from the time they are kidnapped, and during that period neither food nor even water is accorded them!

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'Pour ceux-là,' said our guide, 'ils n'ont aucune valeur; donc, ils ne méritent pas d'être nourris.' The sequitur would have been amusing but for the cruelty of the result, yet did we note many expressive and intelligent faces among them, and there was something infinitely pathetic in the meek resignation with which they seemed to accept their lot. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité,' is profusely inscribed on all the Paris buildings, whether standing or in ruins: the Commune forgot to paint this on the walls of the Fourrière, where the distinctions of patrician and plebeian are followed by such invidious results.

At the extremity of the yard is the canine Place de Grève,' where out of the thousand dogs brought monthly to the Fourrière, 650 are mercilessly hung by the équarrisseur! We found much in these details to shock our humane feelings; and the sight of these poor crea

tures, deprived of their liberty and of all chance of finding their way back to their homes, exposed to the heat or inclemency of the weather, in a sometimes damp, sometimes sultry yard, without water and without food, for three days and nights-even though unconscious of their impending fate-touched us profoundly, and haunted our imagination long after we had left the kennel. The imploring eyes of some, the resigned attitude of others, the starved and helpless aspect of all, seemed doubly sad in presence of the indifferent, not to say brutal, tone of the 'maître des hautes œuvres,' rendered callous, no doubt, by long familiarity with his degrading occupation.

À quoi bon les nourrir ou les arroser?' said he, with a shrug, as he administered a kick on the nose of one who had thrust it through the bars of his cage, and seemed to be piteously, if mutely, appealing to us to intercede for him. A quoi bon, quand après-demain ils seront pendus? Ma foi, ils en valent bien la peine, allez.'

It would seem that sometimes he is spared the trouble of performing this revolting duty; in a corner which he did not seem to care we should explore, we discerned the starved carcase of a dog that had died in his cage, and near it another who did not seem likely to hold out many hours. Whether these had been forgotten, and had been kept unhung over the usual time, it was impossible to determine; possibly they had been brought in in a more hungry condition than the rest.

On the day of our visit, as we were told, a lady had called at the bureau, coolly desiring to leave her dog at the Fourrière. The Contrôleur, surprised at so singular a 'request, asked for an explanation, apprehending that she did not understand the object and uses of the establishment. She simply replied

that she wished them to keep it. 'What are we to do with it?' said the official. Mon Dieu, cela m'est bien égal,' answered the lady; 'I can't kill it myself; no one will buy it; and I don't mean to pay the tax any longer. Of course the arrangement was altogether repudiated, but doubtless the owner of the superfluous dog indemnified herself by 'losing' it in the streets among other waifs abandoned there for similar reasons.

We were not sorry to turn our back on this scene of desolation, and to hurry out of hearing of wails

which seemed to betray that in this canine inferno all hope had been abandoned at the door.

A thousand unowned or disowned dogs, cast unmuzzled every month upon the public streets, no doubt present a formidable difficulty to deal with. Still, the question of their treatment deserves attention, and there is every reason to believe that the Société Protectrice des Animaux, which employs itself to much purpose in Paris, would willingly co-operate in any improvement that a humane ingenuity might suggest.

Von allen Geistern die verneinen

Ist mir der Schalk am wenigsten zur Last. Most assuredly there is room and purpose for der Schalk in the spiritual economy of our world. The Church (though her authorities for the time being will not always allow it) has need of a mocking Voltaire in his place, as well as of her Bossuets, her Pascals, her Taylors, or her Herberts. True, the part to be played is not, to the man himself, so healthy, so heroic, so purifying in the one case as in the other. Few things are more tragic, indeed, than the accidental circumstances which we may often trace as operating to make a spiritual Thersites out of the man who might else have been a spiritual Achilles. What more sorrowful story than that of Swift torn by his own 'fierce indignation '-the infuriate scorn of fool and knave first bred within him by unsatisfied ambition, and deepened ever more and more as the dark cloud of brain disease slowly crept over him? Or that of Heine, all his soul full-fraught with capacity alike for sensual and imaginative enjoyment, and yet chained to his couch for weary years, a bowed invalid and a helpless cripple, while he relieves his torture with laughter more terrible than tears? Even Rabelais himself was no doubt lashed into his wild grotesqueness of satire by an angry sense of that ill-fitting chance which had made him a Franciscan friar. This we may well believe, even if we discard the story which attributes to him that bitter dying speech-' Draw the curtain; the farce is over.'

So far as we can gather, there was nothing of this morbid action of circumstance in the causes which made

more of Voltaire than of Rabelais or Swift or Heine. But there was nothing in him of that superb melancholy which crops out ever and anon in Voltaire's boldest jesting, and never more so than when, as in Candide, his laughter seems to be most free and most reckless. In such laughter, if a man has but ordinary human sympathies, the heart must needs be sorrowful. We know not whether Lucian lacked these sympathies, or whether he merely succeeded in disguising them. But

in all his scornful views of mundane affairs his most especial characteristic is the serenity with which he regards them. It is a serenity which goes near to irritate his merely human reader, expecting all who address him, whether in Democritus' or Heraclitus' vein, to fall back at last on the common confession of Homo sum. But Lucian, as we should surmise, was haunted by no human misgivings of this sort. He seems to have thought that the windy ways of men' were no more concern of his than of his own Charon's when he describes that grim ferryman as visiting the earth with Mercury for a cicerone. Some passages of this dialogue may serve to illustrate the Vanitas vanitatum moral which Lu

cian generally strives to enforce :

Mercury. Do you mark this multitude, Charon? Here they are, some at sea, some at war, some at law, some farming, some lending money, some asking for something

or other.

Charon. I see yon crowd that is ever shifting and yon life that is all confusion, and their cities that are like hives of bees

in which everyone has a sting of his own and keeps stinging his neighbour; while a certain minority, like wasps, harry and spoil the weaker population. And this crowd which flits unseen around themwhat things are they which compose it?

Merc. They are hopes and fears, good Charon, and ignorances and pleasures, and