Numberless writers have noticed the different dispositions of the lower animals, differing not merely in separate species, but in various individuals of the same. There has been no scruple in taking the brutes themselves as types and emblems of moral qualities. Almost every vice and virtue has been unsparingly assigned to one or other of the brute creation. They are brave or cowardly, savage and treacherous, gentle and generous, industrious, idle, obedient, wayward, affectionate, malicious, working always for the common good, or full of rapacity and selfishness. It is likely enough that we often misapply these epithets, and call that courage which is only consciousness of strength, and that malignant ferocity which is really a hungry stomach and a badly-furnished larder; for such mistakes we commit also in judging of our fellow-men. But there are many beautiful instances on record in which dumb creatures have shown themselves capable beyond question of faithful friendship, and therefore as possessing at least the beginnings, if not any high advancement, of a moral nature. None perhaps is more beautiful than that told by Henry Brookes, a writer of the last century, about one of the lions in the Tower of London. A little spaniel picked up in the streets was thrown into the cage of the largest of these beasts, called for his size the king’s lion. ‘Immediately the little animal trembled, and shivered, and crouched, and threw itself on its back, and put forth its tongue, and held up its paws, in supplicatory attitudes, as an acknowledgment of superior power, and praying for mercy. In the meantime the lordly brute, instead of devouring it, beheld it with an eye of philosophic inspection. He turned it over with one paw, and then turned it over with the other, and smelled to it, and seemed desirous of courting a further acquaintance. From this day the strictest friendship commenced between them, a friendship consisting of all possible affection and tenderness on the part of the lion, and of the utmost confidence and boldness on the part of the dog, insomuch that he would lay himself down to sleep, within the fangs and under the jaws of his terrible patron.’ The sequel of the story is pathetic. To tell it briefly, in twelve months the little spaniel sickened and died. The lion at first supposed him to be asleep, but finding that all his efforts to awaken him were in vain, he was filled with intense anguish, would not allow the dead body to be removed, refused all sustenance or comfort, spending his time between rage and grief, till after five days of such an existence, one morning he was found dead, with his head lovingly reclined on the carcase of his little friend[39].