artistic being; though of course he is not now what he was, as a
poser, in the days of Polycletus. There is opportunity for a very
instructive essay by Mr. E. A. Freeman on the decadence of the Attic
goat under the influence of the Ottoman Turk.

The American deer, in the free atmosphere of our country, and as yet
untouched by our decorative art, is without self-consciousness, and
all his attitudes are free and unstudied. The favorite position of
the deer--his fore-feet in the shallow margin of the lake, among the
lily-pads, his antlers thrown back and his nose in the air at the
moment he hears the stealthy breaking of a twig in the forest--is
still spirited and graceful, and wholly unaffected by the pictures of
him which the artists have put upon canvas.

Wherever you go in the Northern forest you will find deer-paths. So
plainly marked and well-trodden are they that it is easy to mistake
them for trails made by hunters; but he who follows one of them is
soon in difficulties. He may find himself climbing through cedar
thickets an almost inaccessible cliff, or immersed in the intricacies
of a marsh. The "run," in one direction, will lead to water; but, in
the other, it climbs the highest hills, to which the deer retires,
for safety and repose, in impenetrable thickets. The hunters, in
winter, find them congregated in " yards," where they can be
surrounded and shot as easily as our troops shoot Comanche women and
children in their winter villages. These little paths are full of
pitfalls among the roots and stones; and, nimble as the deer is, he
sometimes breaks one of his slender legs in them. Yet he knows how
to treat himself without a surgeon. I knew of a tame deer in a
settlement in the edge of the forest who had the misfortune to break
her leg. She immediately disappeared with a delicacy rare in an