20 JANUARY 1877, Page 3

We hope the Islington Gazette of last Wednesday may have

been taken in, much as the Daily Telegraph was apparently taken in a year or two ago, in its account of the dwarf-and-dog fight in the Potteries. The Islington Gazette is usually a •very respect- able paper, in which chapel and church advertisements appear, and which appears to have a serious character; but on Wednes- day it gave, under the word "Communicated," just each another account as the Daily Telegraph gave us a year or two ago, of a fight at a cock-pit in the Upper Street between a pugilist and a chained bull-terrier. The dog was only allowed six feet of chain, or it would apparently have been more than the equal of the man ; and as it was, the duel was said to be an even one, neither party winning. It is de- scribed by the correspondent of the Islington Gazette in language of highly technical slang, and we do not see a word in the paper to intimate any expression of disgust. Certainly the whole affair, if it ever happened, was a disgrace to Islington, and to its police arrangements. Of the two, the man,—who is called " Braddy, the Upper Holloway pugilist,"—was actually much the more brutal. Indeed, properly speaking, it is impossible for a brute to be brutal. Only creatures higher than the brutes can suffer- any reproach for being brutes,—and "brutal," of muse, implies reproach.