" UGLY."* Tms biography of a rough-haired terrier by his

mistress is defective as a work of art, in that it is too digressive, and intro- duces irrelevant sketches of travel' in relation to matters which -do not appear to have interested the subject of it. " Ugly " himself is a fine character, and it is clear that on certain aspects of travel he held strong views which his mistress is quite right in explaining and recording,—especially on the police and railway 'regulations with regard to doge in America, France, Austria, and Bavaria, and the policy of the Inman and Cunard lines of steamers, respectively, on the subject of dog-passengers. But reflections on t he death of the Archduke Maximilian and the sad fate of the Archduchess, comments on the wealth of the peasantry of Dal- matia, violent attacks on the Ex-Emperor of the French, and criticism on the Germans for not making peace after Sedan, are -digressions from the main subject of the book which really injure its artistic unity. The life and death of poor Ugly are full of

t he deepest interest, and digressions of the kind we have named affect us much as digressions on the geology of Spain would -affect us, in a history of the Peninsular War, a propos of the -strategical movements, or parenthetical accounts of the history of University tests would affect us, in a life of Shelley, a propos of his -expulsion from the University. Ugly's mistress has been mis- led into retaining in her life of Ugly notices of events which • no doubt had something to do with his movements, as had the -course of the seasons and the attraction of the moon, but which -come quite as little within the " mind's eye " of the intelligent and affectionate little terrier.

• Lights and Shadows of a Canine Life, with Sketches of navel. By Ugly's Mistress. Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.

Except as regards the irrelevant padding, which swells the little

volume at, the cost of unity of effect, the story of Ugly's life and death is very nicely told. Ugly's mistress became his mistress rather in spite of herself, as it would appear, —for she steadily resisted

the destiny which the dog foresaw for himself, for weeks or months after he had indicated it as one of the coming events of which he had seen the advancing shadow,—at Staten Island, near New York, in 1864. Her coachman had asked for the loan of the dog from a neighbouring inn to guard the stable, and Ugly, occa- sionally escaping from the stable into the drawing-room, did his utmost to persuade his future mistress that their relations must become intimate and tender. She, however, fought against the notion, as women sometimes will fight against the influence of the deepest sentiment of their lives, and had the dog sent back repeatedly to the inn from which he had been borrowed. Ugly was a predestinarian, he did not attempt to hurry ' the logic of events,' but calmly awaited the issue, —going to his plebeian home (a mile and a half off) to lunch, but returning repeatedly, in spite of vain attempts to repulse him (by arguments of the vulgarest kind in the shape of stones and demonstrations of force) to the better home for which his heart told him he was intended. He utilized this time of hope deferred by doing a little bit of independent travelling on his own account, which was doubtless useful to him later on in Europe. His mistress (some time before she became his mistress) once met him on the small steamer which acts as ferry-boat between Staten Island and New York. He was standing on the poop quite alone. He had been to New York for an independent trip, and if he had landed there, must have singled out the right ferry from a multitude of others in which to return to Staten Island (a voyage of three- quarters of an hour). He returned on this occasion with his future mistress to her cottage, but was not yet permitted to fulfil his mission in remaining as her own dog. But,

" The slow sweet hours which bring us all things good, The slow sad hours which bring us all things ill, And all good things from evil,"

brought at length, first, the happy day for Ugly and Ugly's mistress when she yielded to the inevitable, bade him be washed and combed, and paid his former plebeian master for him—after which transaction Ugly never once resumed his old wander- ings,—and finally, after' an interval of some happy six years of travel, they brought, too, the sad day when Ugly jumped into his mistress's arms to die, and she

"To the want that hollowed all the heart Gave utterance by the yearning of an eye That burned upon its object, by such tears As flow but once a life."

The story of the intervening six years is told by Ugly's mistress with a good deal of humour, and now and then not a little pathos, though the book is somewhat alloyed by irrelevant disquisition on things purely human. It is not difficult to pick

out for our readers the leading traits of Ugly's devoted, sensi- tive, and playful character. He seems, as we have said, to have laid down the independence which took him on expeditions

of purely intellectual curiosity from Staten Island to New York, when he formed the great tie of his life, and thenceforth his mind was subordinate to his heart. He had the same mag- netic kind of instinct for finding out his mistress, even in a

new quarter of a new city, which dogs and cats so often display

for finding their way back to an old home from a perfectly new place to which they had been conveyed by railway or carriage.

Let us illustrate by what happened at Florence :—

" A concert was projected at the Philharmonic Rooms by Prince Carlo Poniatowski, the director, and one of the most distinguished amateurs of Italy, in which all the ladies in society who could sing were invited to form a chorus, in order to execute several new and intricate morceaux d'ensembles ; for this, various rehearsals were, of course, necessary, and we (for I had the honour of being invited) were convened accordingly. To the first rehearsal then I drove in a carriage, as the rooms were quite at the opposite end of the city from the Lung' Arno where I dwelt. Ugly was with me in the carriage, and on getting out I chained him up, and giving the chain to the man-servant desired him to walk home, and on no account to let the dog loose till he had come in sight of the house. I then went up three flights of stairs, and through a suite of rooms till I reached the concert-hall. There might have been about a quarter of an hour's delay before commencing the rehearsal, and I was occupying the time in looking over the music we had to study, when suddenly some- thing bounced upon me, nearly knoCking me off my seat,—it was Ugly. We were just about to begin, and I thought of his vocal talent in dismay ; happily, however, a portion of the chorus, to which I did not belong, were requested to try their part first, so I could remain with the interloper and keep him quiet. In a few moments my old man-servant arrived panting and puffing with the chain in his hand, and relating that the dog had actually run back from home all the way through the tortuous streets of Florence, to a part where he had never been before, except in a close carriage ; and then he had, as we know, mounted

various flights of stairs, when after tracing me through several rooms, he was rewarded for this wisdom of the heart by being carried back again in durance vile to await his mistress at home."

And once at Norwood he showed almost greater discrimination amidst the confusion of crowded excursion trains :-

"I remember while staying a few days at Norwood, I had occasion to go to town. Ugly walked with me till we just came in sight of the station, when I told the maid to chain him and take him home. There was a slight delay before the train went off, and a great crowd, as usual, before the carriages. I was just about to get in, when I felt something touch me ; I thought to myself 'If I did not know Ugly was at home, I should say that it was him,'" [sic, our authoress has evidently not corrected her own proofs,] "when sure enough he bounced in after me, and was under the seat in a moment. No less than three trains were going off at the same time, one an excursion to Brighton or some sea- port ; was it not wonderful that he should have threaded his way through all these difficulties in safety ? Surely this was the instinct of the heart ! The maid had unchained him after walking at least half a mile, and the moment she did so, she told me he flew rather than ran, and she after him, to the immense amusement of the Norwood boys and girls. He did the same thing under other circumstances at Ragusa, finding his way into the theatre, and to my box on the dress tier, to the infinite astonish- ment of everybody."

Ugly appears to have been somewhat unsuspicious in forming favourable opinions of people who did not deserve them ; but he had a mind open to new convictions, and when he changed his opinion for the worse he was candid in his mode of conveying the change :-

"While at Richmond, a scamp of a butler, who afterwards stole my dressing-case, got an acquaintance of his to inveigle the dog away, with a female of course, and having locked him up, persuaded me to offer a reward instead of leaving the affair in the hands of the police, as they advised me to do ; of course, almost before the bills were out, the dog was brought back by the butler's friend. I gave the poor little fellow a good scolding for leaving ' his poor Missis.' Ugly seemed much hurt by what I said, and barked most earnestly as if to protest. The next day, on ordering the butler (whom I did not suspect) to take him out for a walk, he refused to go, and got under a chair, growling angrily. On my desiring the servant to fetch his chain, as he was endeavouring to fasten it in his collar the dog suddenly bit the man's thumb till the blood ran down ; he had never attempted anything of the kind before, as he liked him."

Ugly was very jealous himself, but, unlike most jealous men, could make allowances for jealousy in his mistress :—

" When I had been anywhere without him, my maid would say, to teaze him, ' Your Minis has been out with other dogs;' he would then smell my dress all round, and if he found that she had stated the truth, he would bark and stamp at me, and not forgive me imme- diately. If, on the contrary, he smelt no dogs, he would take no notice of the maid's remark, and behave as usual. He did not like me to say was jealous,' and as he was very fond of my maid, sometimes I pre- tended to be so, when he would cry and come and coax me ; but some- times at the time he was doing so he would slyly give her his paw, or a secret kiss when he thought I was not looking."

He had both great prudence and that highest kind of courage which can overcome real fear, and acts on the wise principle, ' If you wish for peace, be ready for war' :—" He was once set upon and bitten by a very large dog in Paris ; after this he always went to the other side of the Boulevard when he passed his enemy's house ; but if by chance he spied the big dog at the door he would pass on the same side, with his tail erect, not choosing evidently that the other should see he feared him." But after all, his great quality was his unlimited devotion to his mistress. This is how he acted when she had left him in Paris for a month under the care of a maid he was very fond of :— " The maid wrote to me regularly ; I told her when my letters came to let him smell them, and to tell him they were from Missis,' and that she was coming back to Ugly.' She said he would sit on a chair by her, and try to understand all she said, and when she stopped, would put his paw on her arm and look in her face, as if he would say, Tell me again about my Minis.' She also said that on coming from his walk he would look all over the apartment, smelling in every possible corner, in the hope that I might have returned. And when that happy moment came, if ever a dog went into hysterics, Ugly did. He screamed for joy, bark- ing and crying together, till I feared he would be ill ; nor did he lose me out of his sight for very long after."

In his last illness (due, we suspect, from what his mistress states, more to distemper than primarily to inflammation of the lungs), he would, though very impatient of medicine usually, take anything his mistress entreated him to take for her sake. And the parting was a great deal sadder than that of many human death-beds :—

" I had a little mutton broth to try to induce dear little Ugly to take a little ; he would not even look at it. I went into the dining-room to take a little refreshment myself at five; while there, Ugly lay before the fire and slept for half an hour peacefully; his breath much easier. I was full of hope ; on waking, he came to me at once into the next room. We carried him back into the drawing-room, where we placed him in an arm-chair, thinking he might perhaps sleep leaning back. He seemed much calmer and to be trying to find a comfortable position. I told the maid to stroke his head, and, feeling very tired, I leaned back on the sofa, which touched Ugly's chair. The dear pet seemed a little easier, so I would not disturb him to give him his medicine. When suddenly, to our surprise, he rose up apparently as strong as ever, and stepping

over the arm of the chair, after first, as the maid said, casting at her 'w beautiful look,' he ran to me and fell into my arms as into a refuge. I told her to cover him, and I stroked his dear head, thinking he had gone into a sweet and refreshing sleep. I heard no more the poor labouring breath, and believed the malady had taken a turn. And, truly, the crisis had come, but it was not till the doctor paid his visit three-quarters of an hour later, that I knew the poor little tender loving heart had ceased to beat ; that the faithful devotion of a life had ended at the moment when he ran to my arms, breathing out there as fond and true a soul as ever existed."

Such were the chief traits of the character which Ugly's mis- tress here delineates for us. In addition, we may add that he had a great sense of property, never allowing his little cloak, comb, brush, and ball to be touched by strangers ; that he was bitterly- opposed to all cruelty, and once rushed upon the stage to prevent a histrionic Bluebeard from destroying his wife ; and that he discharged with great acuteness and fidelity throughout Europe the duties of courier in relation to his mistress's luggage— thoroughly distrusting, as he did, the race of porters—sometimes accompanying it in the dark to the boat far out of sight of his mistress, and returning to meet her directly he had seen it deposited in safety. Evidently this was a dog of a keen understanding, a. deep sense of duty, and a devoted heart ; capable of putting a de- liberate constraint on his instincts,—witness his crossing over to the side of the street where the dog he dreaded lived, if the enemy were- visible, though trying to avoid the opportunity of a meeting, if he were not,—and therefore we should say clearly capable of free voli- tion. We do not wonder that Ugly's mistress, in the intensity of her love for him, insists on believing in his immortality ; but we- are touched with the deep pathos of her painful uncertainty, when, we find her quoting so inferior a being as a rhapsodical and tran- scendental American ' medium' by way of adding to her assurance.. Ugly would have had a poor opinion of a " trance-medium," and in his presence we are disposed to conjecture that the trance would not have been undisturbed.