It was an old belief that the deer wept every year for the loss of their horns, “a likeness of those who grieve for the loss of their worldly possessions. So, too, should a penitent and watchful sinner not cease to weep when he is overtaken.” This straining after a moral, as we have already seen, is a very marked feature amongst the old writers. Sometimes the moral sentiment flows fairly naturally, but more often it is terribly laboured. Thus, for example, we read that “the ferret is a bold and audacious beast (though little), and an enemie to all other, and when they take a prey their custome and manner is onely to suck the bloud as they bite it, and not to eat the flesh; and if at any time their prey shall be taken from them they fall a squeaking and crying. Such are the rich men of this world, who yell and crie out when they part with their riches, weeping and wailing for the losse of such things as they have hunted after with as much greedinesse as want of pitie.” In like manner we learn that “when the Squirrell is hunted she cannot be driven to the ground, unlesse extremitie of faintnesse cause her to do so through an unwilling compulsion, for such is the stately mind of this little beast that while her limbes and strength lasteth she tarrieth and saveth herself in the tops of tall trees, disdaining to come down for every harm or hurt which she feeleth; knowing, indeed, her greatest danger to rest below amongst the dogs and busie hunters. From whence may be gathered a perfect pattern for us, to be secured from all the wiles and hungrie chasings of the treacherous devil: namely, that we keep above in the loftie palaces of heavenlie meditations, for there is small securitie in things on earth; and greatest ought to be our fear of danger, when we leave to look and think of heaven.” The fabulists and moralists of ancient and mediæval days regarded animals as so much raw material to be modelled into whatever form best suited their ends. They were little, if at all, concerned in giving a true picture of animal life, but used the various creatures in such conventional and allegorical way as most readily adapted itself to the moral or political end in view in their writings. Art has often pursued much the same course, and instead of giving us the real animal nature has introduced an entirely foreign element, and represented the creatures as swayed by purely human considerations. Æsop and La Fontaine make the animals speak as though they were influenced by human feelings and motives, while Landseer, for example, in some of his noble pictures employs his dogs and other animals to simulate humanity, as in “Laying Down the Law,” “Alexander and Diogenes,” and other well-known works of the master. The result is quaint, grotesque, delicious, humorous; but these law-givers, philosophers, and so forth, are canine in form alone, and are but puppets acting a part that is a good-natured satire on humanity.