All the other dogs we have discussed could do something for their living, besides looking pretty, wriggling and chasing their tails. Even Carlo could course when he was requested; but Roi—or Roy, as his name was corrupted into old English—and Reine were destitute of resources beyond the simple ones mentioned. Were those gifts enough to entitle the dogs to the daintiest maintenance? Were the shallow creatures worthy of being a man’s companions and friends? Alas! if our receipts were measured by our deserts, many of us would fare but badly. The little dogs were endowed with one quality which we may be thankful appeals more forcibly than any other to the hearts of men—not of weak men alone or principally, but of the manliest and most generous of their kind. Roy and Reine were helpless as delicate women and feeble children, and in that very helplessness lay their charm to the strong and capable, who were not bullies in their strength, or arrogant in their power. I do not say that there is not a subtle flattery and deep danger in this appeal of weakness to strength. I do not pretend that it has not ruined, unawares, many a Samson, destroying him by his very magnanimity. But I do hold that the tenderness for beings at men’s mercy belongs to one of the noblest, gentlest instincts of the human heart, and that it is not only chivalrous in its development, it is, when rightly judged, profoundly Christian in its sympathies. Roy and Reine lived considerably more than two hundred years ago, when there was another England from the one we live in to-day, an England of keen political strife. (Well, perhaps that is peculiar to no time, or at least occurs periodically once in every generation.) But it was also an England of such civil war and bloodshed, polluting its fresh fields, and darkening its peaceful hearths, as happily has not been seen since then—not when Monmouth was routed at Sedgemoor—not when the last James fled in his turn, and William of Orange landed, and appropriated the crown left vacant, which became twin circlets for his head and Mary’s—not when Bonnie Prince Charlie—a fatal title, which could not give way to anything more trustworthy—marched with his Highlanders as far south as Derby. Charles the First and his Star Chamber, with his French queen and her French manœuvres, had turned the people of England against their government. The last Parliaments had proved either divided or rebellious. John Hampden had refused to pay the illegal ship-money; the train bands had been mustered; the whole country had risen to arms. England was parted into two warlike camps, Royalist and Roundhead.