Page:Under the Sun.djvu/211

Rh latter animal is the better of the two. It is generous and brave, the King of Beasts, and one of the supporters of the British Arms.

Landseer has done a great deal for this lion, and in Trafalgar Square in London has left on record four specimens, which all other lions, vel Africanus vel Asiaticus should try and live up to. Other artists also, notably Doré on canvass, and Thorwaldsen in stone, have advantaged the artificial lion very considerably, and both poets and lion-slayers have done their best to elevate its moral and physical virtues in the public estimation, — the former from a mistaken estimate of this animal’s character, derived from antiquity, the latter from a natural desire to represent themselves as being men of an extraordinary courage. These powerful agencies between them have succeeded in rehabilitating the artificial lion, who was at one time becoming rapidly absurd by the liberties taken with it in heraldry and on sign-boards.

A lion rampant, with his tongue lolling out, and two knobs at the end of his tail, is only one of a hundred heraldic aberrations from the normal type, which lovers of nature must agree in deploring; and the green, blue, and red lions of English inns were all such “fearful wild-fowl” as might make cats weep. There have even been spotted lions! It was high time therefore for the artistic champions of the great cat to come to the front, or we might soon have had Tabby and Tortoise-shell lions and Tom lions on our sign-boards.

What dignity after this would have attached to that haughty speech of the lioness who, being rallied by a grasshopper upon having only one cub, loftily replied, “Yes, true, I have only one — but that one is a lion.”