horse. In our own days do they not dye dogs blue and green? Nature is

our canvas. Man has always wished to add something to God's work. Man

retouches creation, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. The Court

buffoon was nothing but an attempt to lead back man to the monkey. It

was a progress the wrong way. A masterpiece in retrogression. At the

same time they tried to make a man of the monkey. Barbara, Duchess of

Cleveland and Countess of Southampton, had a marmoset for a page.

Frances Sutton, Baroness Dudley, eighth peeress in the bench of barons,

had tea served by a baboon clad in cold brocade, which her ladyship

called My Black. Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, used to go

and take her seat in Parliament in a coach with armorial bearings,

behind which stood, their muzzles stuck up in the air, three Cape

monkeys in grand livery. A Duchess of Medina-Celi, whose toilet Cardinal

Pole witnessed, had her stockings put on by an orang-outang. These

monkeys raised in the scale were a counterpoise to men brutalized and

bestialized. This promiscuousness of man and beast, desired by the

great, was especially prominent in the case of the dwarf and the dog.

The dwarf never quitted the dog, which was always bigger than himself.

The dog was the pair of the dwarf; it was as if they were coupled with a

collar. This juxtaposition is authenticated by a mass of domestic

records--notably by the portrait of Jeffrey Hudson, dwarf of Henrietta

of France, daughter of Henri IV., and wife of Charles I.

To degrade man tends to deform him. The suppression of his state was

completed by disfigurement. Certain vivisectors of that period succeeded

marvellously well in effacing from the human face the divine effigy.

Doctor Conquest, member of the Amen Street College, and judicial visitor

The Man Who Laughs