We always loved a dog; and it almost broke our little heart, when but a trudging schoolboy, in our first jacket-and-trowsers, our kind mother made us take back the young puppy that had hardly got its eyes open, which we one day brought home, to be kept until it was fit to be taken from its natural nurse. We are now among the boys, John, Tom, and Harry; and intend to give them the benefit of our own experience in this line, as well as to say a few words to the elder brothers,--and fathers, even,--if they do not turn up their noses in contempt of our instruction, on a subject so much beneath their notice. We say that we love dogs: not _all_ dogs, however. But we love some dogs--of the right breeds. There is probably no other civilized country so dog-ridden as this, both in "Mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound, And curs of _low_ degree." Goldsmith, kind man that he was, must have been a capital judge of dogs, like many other poetical gentlemen. Still, other men than poets are sometimes good judges, and great lovers of dogs; but the mass of people are quite as well satisfied with one kind of dog as with another, so that it be a dog; and they too often indulge in their companionship, much to the annoyance of good neighborhood, good morals, and, indeed, of propriety, thrift, and common justice. Of all these we have nothing to say--here, at least. Ours is a "free country"--for dogs, if for nothing else. Nor shall we discuss the various qualities, or the different breeds of dogs for sporting purposes. We never go out shooting; nor do we take a hunt--having no taste that way. Perhaps in this we are to be pitied; but we are content as it is. Therefore we shall let the hounds, and pointers, and setters, the springers, and the land and the water spaniels, all alone. The mastiffs, and the bull dogs, too, we shall leave to those who like them. The poodle, and the little lap-dog of other kinds, also, we shall turn over to the kindness of those who--we are sorry for them, in having nothing better to interest themselves about--take a pleasure in keeping and tending them. We want to mix in a little _usefulness_, as well as amusement, in the way of a dog; and after a whole life, thus far, of dog companionship, and the trial of pretty much every thing in the line of a dog--from the great Newfoundland, of a hundred pounds weight, down to the squeaking little whiffet, of six--we have, for many years past, settled down into the practical belief that the small ratting terrier is the only one, except the shepherd dog, we care to keep; and of these, chiefly, we shall speak.