Besides reflection and sagacity, often in an astonishing degree, and besides the sentiments and actions prompted by social or natural attachments, brutes seem on many occasions inspired with a superior faculty, a kind of presentiment or second sight, as it were, with regard to events and designs altogether unforeseen by the rational beings whom they concern. The following account is of unquestionable authenticity.

At the seat of the late Earl of Litchfield, three miles from Blenheim, there is a portrait in the dining-room of Sir Henry lee, by Johnston, with that of a mastiff dog which saved his life. A servant had formed the design of assassinating his master, and robbing the house ; but the night he had fixed on, the dog, which had never been much noticed by Sir Henry, for the first time followed him up stairs, got under his bed, and could not be got from thence by either master or man : in the dead of night, the same servant entered the room to execute his horrid design, but was instantly seized by the dog, and, being secured, confessed his intentions. Upon what hypothesis can we account for a degree of foresight and penetration such as this ? Will it be suggested, as a solution of the difficulty, that a dog may possibly become capable in a great measure of understanding human discourse, and of reasoning and acting accordingly; and that, in the present instance, the villain had either uttered his design in soliloquy, or imparted it to an accomplice, in the hearing of the animal?

It has been disputed whether the brutes have any language whereby they can express their minds to each other; or whether all the noise they make consists only of cries, inarticulate and unintelligible even to themselves. Father Bougeant gives the following instance, among others, to prove that brutes are capable of forming designs, and of communicating those designs to others. - A sparrow, finding a nest that a martin had just built, standing very conveniently for him, possessed himself of it. The martin, seeing the usurper in her house, called for help to expel him. A thousand martins came full speed, and attacked the sparrow; but the latter being covered on every side, and presenting only his large beak at the entrance of the nest, was invulnerable, and made the boldest of them who durst approach him repent of their temerity. After a quarter of an hours combat, all the martins disappeared: the sparrow thought he had got the better, and the spectators judged that the martins had abandoned the undertaking. Not in the least; immediately they returned to the charge, and each of them having procured a little of that tempered earth with which they make their nests, they all at once fell upon the sparrow, and enclosed him in the nest, to perish there, though they could not drive him thence. - Can it be imagined that the martins could have been able to hatch and concert this design all of them together, without speaking to each other, or without some medium of communication equivalent to language?