brute creation." He resumed the whistle,--a clearer, louder, wilder
tune,--that of a lively hunting-song. The deer turned quickly round,--
uneasy, restless, tossed its antlers, and bounded through the fern.
Waife again changed the key of his primitive music,--a melancholy belliny
note, like the belling itself of a melancholy hart, but more modulated
into sweetness. The deer arrested its flight, and, lured by the mimic
sound, returned towards the water-side, slowly and statelily.

"I don't think the story of Orpheus charming the brutes was a fable; do
you, sir?" said Waife. "The rabbits about here know me already; and, if
I had but a fiddle, I would undertake to make friends with that reserved
and unsocial water-rat, on whom Sir Isaac in vain endeavours at present
to force his acquaintance. Man commits a great mistake in not
cultivating more intimate and amicable relations with the other branches
of earth's great family. Few of them not more amusing than we are;
naturally, for they have not our cares. And such variety of character
too, where you would least expect it!"

GEORGE MORLEY.--"Very true. Cowper noticed marked differences of
character in his favourite hares."

WAIFE.--"Hares! I am sure that there are not two house-flies on a
window-pane, two minnows in that water, that would not present to us
interesting points of contrast as to temper and disposition. If house-
flies and minnows could but coin money, or set up a manufacture,--
contrive something, in short, to buy or sell attractive to Anglo-Saxon
enterprise and intelligence,--of course we should soon have diplomatic
relations with them; and our despatches and newspapers would instruct us
to a T in the characters and propensities of their leading personages.
But, where man has no pecuniary nor ambitious interests at stake in his