[ "A Concise Abridgment of Natural History" / La Belle Assemblée ]
La Belle Assemblée — its original subtitle was "Or, Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine; Containing Interesting and Original Literature, and Records of the Beau-monde, Addressed Particularly to the Ladies — was a monthly magazine published from 1806 to 1837 in London.
The June 1817 issue published an installment of a serial article entitled "A Concise Abridgment of Natural History," presented as a series of letters from "a lady to her daughter." In this issue "the lady" discusses dogs, including the Newfoundland. This entry is little more than a rewording of parts of the discussion of Newfoundland dogs in Thomas Bewick's A General History of Quadrupeds (1790), treated here at The Cultured Newf.
Of particular note is the fact the author uses the name "Carlo" as a generic label for all Newfoundlands. This is surely due to the popularity (and notoriety) of Francis Reynold's 1803 play The Caravan, which featured a life-saving Newf named Carlo. Reynold's play, and in particular Carlo the Newf, went on to become well-known in the culture wars of early 19th-Century Britain.
The different species of dogs afford a wonderful variety; naturalists reckon as many as twenty-three. Of these I shall
only touch in part, and will commence with that to which old Carlo belongs; though, perhaps, as an Englishwoman, I ought to have given the preference to our native mastiff, for Carlo is certainly a foreigner, being really brought from the country of which he bears the name, Newfoundland.
The strength and docility of this species render them peculiarly serviceable and useful in the abovementioned country, where they are employed in carrying wood on sledges of considerable weight; and these services their great sagacity has often caused them to perform without a driver, and having delivered their load at the proper place, they will return,in the same order they were dispatched, back into the woods.
The following anecdote of their docility and wonderful instinct is so well authenticated, that it may be implicitly relied on.
A gentleman walking by the side of the river Tyne, observed, on the opposite side, that a child had fallen into the water; he pointed out the object to a Newfoundland dog that accompanied him, which immediately jumped in, took the child in its
mouth, and brought it safe to land. (253 -254)