the fitness of things, after Paul's death this sturdy fellow was made over to Paul's beloved sister, Florence, and guarded her and her efficient maid, Susan Nipper, with great discretion and fidelity. All the world has laughed at Mr. Toots' encounter with this dog, toward whose legs " Diogenes seemed to entertain a strong antipathy. " Diogenes " was a plebeian dog, and as such was recognized and frowned upon and disapproved by the stiff and starchy Mr. Dombey, senior. The waking and sleeping moments of these two animals are portrayed by the novelist with the most delicate touches and the most observ ant elaboration. Less minutely drawn, and still quite characteristic, is Bill Sikes' cur in " Oliver Twist." This knowing animal was painfully aware of Bill's design to take his life, and promptly evaded him for the time, but returned in time to perish with him, as it would seem almost by suicide, by precipi tating himself from the fatal roof upon his ruffian master's body dangling from the rope below. This incident is one of the most powerful in the great master's earlier works, and strongly enhances the horror of the criminal's singular death. In the inci dent of the dog " Lion's" attack upon Blandón, in "Little Dorrit,'1 the author shows how well the animal remembered and how surely he recognized a villain. It is evident that Dickens agreed with the lisping circus-master, in " Hard Times," that " dogth ith wonderful animalth." So strong is his sympathy with them that the gipsy Hugh's last words on the gallows, in " Barnaby Rudge," are an appeal to some one to adopt and care for his dog. Dickens has not done so much for cats, but that is their fault, not his. In two instances, however, he makes very suggestive companions of them — one as the dozing, winking associate of the severe Mrs. Pipchin, little Paul Dombey's nurse, and the other as the black familiar of old " Krook," the ole-clo' "chancellor" in "Bleak House," sitting on his shoulder and brandishing his athletic tail like a mace of office. In this same novel we encounter another example of the novelist's exquisite sense of fitness, in giving to little Miss Flite, the crazed Chancery suitor, for companions cages of larks, linnets and bull finches (the Chairman is shocked to see that in ' ' Law and Lawyers in Literature " he called them canaries) — her wards in chancery, which she had appropriately named Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs. Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon and Spinach, and to which she gave their freedom on the memorable day when the famous suit of Jarndyce 7/. Jarndyce " lapsed and melted away." amid the laughter of the lawyers, because there was no fund left to pay the costs.
The minuteness and accuracy of Dickens' observa tions of animals is illustrated by the following, from "Tale of Two Cities": " The owl made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise con ventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate nature of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set down for them." In the same wonderful story, the author illustrates the poverty of the village by the fact that it had no dogs. That is a weird touch of fancy by which he sets the bird to singing sweetly near the head of the cruel Marquislying murdered in his body. And in his description of the wine-shop on a hot day in Paris, he gives this minute observation of flies: " Heaps of flies who were extending their adventurous and inquisitive per quisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near Madame, fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on the other flies out prome nading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as if they themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until they met the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies are! — per haps they thought as much at Court that sunny summer day." The only other very great author in whom the love of dumb animals is very apparent is Shakespeare, in whom we now recall Launce's friendship with and sufferings for his dog " Crab," and the melancholy Jacques' touching description of the sorrow of the hunted stag. To these two greatest creators of character in fiction seems to have been given the capacity to understand and describe the emotions of instinct in animals, as well as the processes of reason in humankind from the cradle to the grave. Dickens, who dwelt so much in his stories in the Inns of Court, would rejoice to read the following from a late number of the " Law Journal " : "Much concern has needlessly been expressed as to the fate of the Temple pigeons. It has been asserted in all quarters of the Press that the Benchers had determined upon a policy of extermination, and that before many weeks were over the pleasant whirr of the pigeons' wings would cease to be heard in the Inn. The officials of the Temple are quite unaware that the Benchers have arrived at any such decision. It is necessary, of course, to reduce the number of pigeons from time to time, hut there is no foundation for the statement that a policy of extermination by starvation has been decided upon."
NOTES OF CASES.
COERCION OF WIFE. — In the march of legisla tion, which has done so much to put the wife on a legal equality with the husband in this country, it was a well advised step, in the Penal Code of New York, to do away with the ancient legend that the wife
