ness. The same enviable instinct which prompts them to offer their gentle tokens of regard, teaches them sobriety and reserve.
Mr. Arnold had a second and less distinguished cat named Blacky, about whom we are told little, save that he lost one of his legs by some sad accident, and went about contentedly on the remaining three all the years of his life, the cheeriest and most agile of cripples. Atossa was a very beautiful Persian; and who that has read the pathetic lament for "Poor Matthias," can forget the description of her compelling and sinister loveliness?
"Thou hast seen Atossa sage
Sit for hours beside thy cage;
Thou wouldst chirp, thou foolish bird,
Flutter, chirp,—she never stirred!
What were now these toys to her?
Down she sank amid her fur;
Eyed thee with a soul resign'd,
And thou deemedst cats were kind!
—Cruel, but composed and bland,
Dumb, inscrutable, and grand;
So Tiberius might have sat,
Had Tiberius been a cat."
And so Montaigne might have written, had Montaigne been a poet. The attitude of the two men towards the animals they loved, but could not hope to understand,—an unmoral, unjudicial attitude, as remote from vindication as from denunciation, shows
