But the obstinacy of the long-eared animal is proverbial; and in nothing is it more strikingly exhibited than in the fact that he _will_ eat if he can. So was it before the days of Æsop's ass, that cropped a thistle and was torn in pieces for confessing it; and so has it been before and since the hour when Sterne's ass consumed the macaroon which curiosity and not charity presented to him. It is possibly this expensive habit that has led the mountebank, of late, to cast off the donkey, and to substitute a boy for him, in the feat of the ladder. The performance to this hour is the same, with that exception--a two-legged juvenile for a four. Perhaps the mountebank was jealous of the ass! Can we assume that, in the nature of a mountebank balancing on his chin a ladder surmounted by a long-eared brute, there is no room for vanity? Can we imagine a donkey-balancer incapable of feeling annoyed, when he sees his subordinate--the agent through whom his own abilities are to be demonstrated--creating peals of laughter by doing nothing, trotting off with the spoils he did not win, and cropping every thistle of fame that belongs to another? There is no mind too shallow for vanity to take root in, no talent too small for it to twine itself round, no competitor too contemptible to pique and wound it. "Why, Edmund Kean couldn't get a hand of applause, with such a noisy brute as that in the piece!" said an actor in the drama of the _Dog of Montargis_, when the quadruped was howling over the murdered body of his master, and breaking the hearts of the audience. [Illustration] At all events the Boy _has_ taken the Ass's place on the ladder. The change may have arisen out of that tenderness for the brute creation which is too amiable a feeling--when in excess--to pass unadmired. There is a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; and to risk a donkey's life on a ladder, for the sport of a heedless crowd, might be dangerous to the mountebank. In _this_ age, society at large knows what is due to donkeys; we can all enter into their feelings. But as there is no law, and no moral principle, against the elevation of a human urchin, even to the top stave of the ladder, there is no reason why the sport should not continue. Philosophers will explain to you, that a boy is a free agent, and has a right to be balanced on a human chin, if he likes; but a donkey has no will of his own at all--_except_--except when you've hired him for an hour, at Ramsgate, and are endeavouring to persuade yourself that you're trotting him out of the town.