"there are some that are mad if they behold a cat--a harmless, necessary cat." Count Bertram would seem to have shared in this unaccountable aversion. When "Monsieur Parolles, the gallant militarist, that had the whole theory of war in the knot of his scarf, and the practice in the shape of his dagger," was convicted of mendacity and cowardice, Bertram exclaimed, "I could endure any thing before this but a cat, and now he's a cat to me." The fores of censure could no further go. If Napoleon, however, held cats, as has been averred, in positive fear, there have been others, and some of them illustrious captains, that have regarded them with other feelings. Marshall Turenne could amuse himself for hours in playing with his kittens; and the great general, Lord Heathfield, would often appear on the walls of Gibraltar, at the time of the famous siege, attended by his favorite cat. Cardinal Richelieu was also fond of cats; and when we have enumerated the names of Cowper and Dr. Johnson, of Thomas Gray and Isaac Newton, and, above all, of the tender-hearted and meditative Montaigne, the list is far from complete of those who have bestowed on the feline race some portion of their affections. Butler, in his _Hudibras_, observes in an oft-quoted passage, that "Montaigne, playing with his cat, Complains she thought him but an ass." And the annotator on this passage, in explanation, adds, that "Montaigne in his Essays supposes his cat thought him a fool for losing his time in playing with her;" but, under favor, this is a misinterpretation of the essayist's sentiments, and something like a libel on the capacity of both himself and cat. Montaigne's words are: "When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert each other with our play. If I have my hour to begin or refuse, so also has she hers." Nobody who has read the striking essay in which these words appear could a moment misconceive their author's meaning. He is vindicating natural theology from the objections of some of its opponents, and in the course of his argument he takes occasion to dwell on the wonderful instincts, and almost rational sagacity of the inferior animals. We must, however, lament that, although he does full justice to the "half-reasoning elephant," to the aptitude and fidelity of the dog, to the marvellous economical arrangements of the bees, and even to the imitative capacity of the magpie, he pays no higher tribute to the merits of the cat than that she is as capable of being amused as himself, and like himself, too, has her periods of gravity when recreative sports are distasteful. Her social qualities he does not allude to, though he, so eminently social himself, could scarcely have failed to appreciate them.