man fancied—more Gallic vivacity than falls to the lot of most Saxon cats. For it was one of Chateaubriand's favourite theories that domestic animals share in an extraordinary degree the national traits of the people among whom their lives are spent. He delighted, when travelling, to observe their expressions and demeanour, declaring that he saw reflected in them the expressions and demeanour of their masters;—the gayety, the sadness, the intelligence, the stupidity which they daily encountered in man. Thus the German beasts had, he felt, "the temperate character of their reasonable owners;" while the serious silence, the subdued reserve of English animals oppressed his cheerful soul. "The London sparrow," he wrote in 1798, "all blackened with smoke, hops drearily about the streets. One seldom hears a dog bark, or a horse neigh, and even the free and independent cat ceases to mew upon the housetop."
The supreme egotism of Chateaubriand could hardly fail to find expression in his most generous utterances, and it is amusing to hear him proclaim himself to M. de Marcellus the champion and advocate of the cat, because she was "one of the works of God which is most despised by man."—"Buffon," he added, "has belied this animal. I am labouring at her rehabilitation, and hope to make her appear a tolerably good sort of beast."
