Thursday, two o’clock, there was ‘Countess’ as large as life, asleep, as she is now.” Another authority states that she knew Mr. Jacob Bell, and lived in the house at Wandsworth, from the balcony of which the dog fell. She had often heard Mr. Bell give the following version of the circumstances:--“The hound was, one dark night, anxiously watching her master’s return from London. She heard the wheels of his gig and his voice, but in leaping from the balcony where she watched, she missed her footing and fell all but dead at her master’s feet. Mr. Bell placed the hound in his gig and returned to London, called Sir Edwin Landseer from his bed, and had a sketch made then and there of the dying animal.” The rapidity with which this picture was produced is another illustration of the facility of Sir Edwin’s brush; the canvas is no little one, it measures three feet three inches high, by four feet one inch wide. “Comical Dogs,” now at South Kensington, shows two large, rough terriers, who have been decorated by their master, the one with an old woman’s cap, and a pipe in its mouth, the other with a great Scotch bonnet. There is a good deal of humour in this picture, but it is not one of the artist’s best paintings. “Odin,” engraved by Mr. W. H. Simmons, a fine picture of a famous dog, and others, were exhibited in 1836. “Odin” belongs to Mr. W. Russell. We have already related an anecdote of its execution. “Odin” was a smooth mastiff, the property of Mr. Russell. In 1836 was published [Illustration: _Donkey and Foal._] “The Sportsman’s Annual,” with illustrations by Edwin Landseer, A. Cooper, and C. Hancock, thirteen lithographs of dogs, with a descriptive text. In 1837 came “The Highland Shepherd’s Chief Mourner,” which is far more touching than direct appeals to the imagination: a lonely shepherd has finished a long life, and the picture represents his coffin covered by his maud for a pall, with his dog, the trusty companion of his later years, and chief mourner, the single and faithful guardian of the dead. The expression and attitude of the friendless animal suggest almost human woe; his limbs seem relaxed and without life, as, pressing close to the coffin and resting his head on it, he broods over his loss. The pious life of the shepherd is hinted by a Bible on a stool in front, his age and infirmities by the spectacles beside the book, never more to be used.[39]