The King Charles's Spaniel,
so called from the fondness of Charles II for it — who usually had some of them following him, wherever he went — belongs likewise to the cockers. Its form and character are well preserved in one of the paintings of the unfortunate parent of that monarch and his family. The ears deeply fringed and sweeping the ground, the rounder form of the forehead, the larger and moister eye, the longer and silken coat, and the clearness of the tan, and white and black colour, sufficiently distinguish this variety. His beauty and diminutive size have consigned him to the drawing-room or parlour.
Charles the First had a breed of spaniels, very small, with the hair black and curly. The spaniel of the second Charles was of the black and tan breed.
The King Charles's breed of the present day is materially altered for the worse. The muzzle is almost as short, and the forehead as ugly and prominent, as the veriest bull-dog. The eye is increased to double its former size, and has an expression of stupidity with which the character of the dog too accurately corresponds. Still there is the long ear, and the silky coat, and the beautiful colour of the hair, and for these the dealers do not scruple to ask twenty, thirty, and even fifty guineas.
[This] breed of dog was cultivated with such jealous care by the late Duke of Norfolk, that no solicitation or entreaty could induce this nobleman to part with one of these favourites, except under certain peculiar stipulations and injunctions, as detailed in the following interview of Mr. Blaine with the late Duchess of York.
"On one occasion, when we were accompanying Her Royal Highness to her menagerie, with almost a kennel of canine favourites behind her, after drawing our attention to a jet black pug pup she had just received from Germany, she remarked that she was going to show me what she considered a present of much greater rarity, which was a true King Charles's breed sent to her by the Duke of Norfolk. 'But,' she observed, 'would you believe he could be so ungallant as to write word that he must have a positive promise not from myself, but from the Duke of York, that I should not breed from it in the direct line?'"
Notwithstanding these selfish restrictions on the part of this noble patron of the spaniel, this breed of dog has become quite common in England, and not a few have found their way to this country. — L.
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