Florence.
P. S.--By-the-bye, talking of cats, there is a story current, that a
certain archbishop, who sits neither at Canterbury nor York, having once,
in unbending mood, demanded of one of his clergy if he could decline "cat,"
corrected the reverend catechumen, when, having arrived at the vocative
case, he gave it, "Vocative, O cat!" and declared such declension to be
wrong, and that the vocative of "cat" was "_puss_." Of course, it will be
henceforth considered so in the diocese presided over by the prelate in
question, as the gender of "carrosse" was changed throughout _la belle
France_, by a blunder of the _grand monarque_. But surely the archbishop
was as palpably wrong as the king was. At least, if he was not, we have
only the alternative of considering Shakspeare to have blundered. For, have
we not Stefano's address to poor Caliban:
"Open your mouth; here is that which will give language to you, _cat_."
And again, does not Lysander, somewhat ungallantly, thus apostrophise
Hermia:
"Hang off, thou _cat_, thou burr!"
Moreover, will not the pages of our nursery literature furnish on the other
hand abundance of {575} instances _passim_ of _puss_ used in every one of
the oblique cases, as well as in the nominative?
_Tailless Cats_ (Vol. ix., pp. 10. 111.).--It may be interesting to your
correspondent SHIRLEY HIBBERD to know, that the Burmese breed of cats is,
like that of the Isle of Man, tailless; or, if not exactly without tails,
the tails they have are so short as to be called so merely by the extremest
courtesy. This is the only respect, however, in which they differ from
other cats.