SONG OF BIRDS.

Skilful

NATURE has her seasons of festivity, for which she assembles musicians from all the regions of the globe. performers with their wondrous sonatas, itinerant minstrels who can only sing short ballads, pilgrims who repeat a thousand and a thousand times the couplets of their long solemn songs, are beheld flocking together from all quarters. The thrush whistles, the swallow twitters, the ringdove coos: the first, perched on the topmost branches of an elm, defies our solitary blackbird, who is in no respect inferior to the stranger; the second, lodged under some hospitable roof, utters his confused cries, as in the days of Evander; the third, concealed amid the foliage of an oak, prolongs her soft moanings like the undulating sound of a horn in the forests. The redbreast, meanwhile, repeats her simple strain on the barn-door, where she has built her compact and mossy nest; but the nightingale disdains to waste her lays amid this symphony: she waits till night has imposed silence, and takes upon herself that portion of the festival which is celebrated in its shades.

Chateaubriand, Genius of Christianity.

SONG OF BIRDS.

LIGHT as the lark that carolled o'er his head,
His own shrill matin joined the various notes
Of Nature's music, from a thousand throats;
The blackbird strove with emulation sweet,
And Echo answered from her close retreat,
The sporting white-throat on some twig's end borne,
Poured hymns to freedom and the rising morn;
Stopped in her song, perchance, the starting thrush
Shook a white shower from the blackthorn bush,
Where dewdrops thick as early blossoms hung,
And trembled as the minstrel sweetly sung.

Bloomfield, Farmer's Boy.

SONG OF BIRDS.

AND all sweet birds sung there their lays of love;
The mellow thrush, the blackbird loud and shrill,
The rapturous nightingale, that shook the grove,
Made the ears vibrate and the heart-strings thrill ;
The ambitious lark, that soaring in the sky,
Poured forth her lyric strain of ecstasy.

Sometimes when that wild chorus intermits,

The linnet's song was heard amid the trees,
A low sweet voice; and sweeter still, at fits

The ring-dove's cooing came upon the breeze;
While with the wind which moved the leaves among,
The murmuring waters joined in undersong.

Southey, Pilgrimage to Waterloo.

SONG OF BIRDS.

THE music of every bird in captivity produces no very pleasing sensations; it is but the mirth of a little animal insensible of its unfortunate situation; it is the landscape, the grove, the golden break of day, the contest upon the hawthorn, the fluttering from branch to branch, the soaring in the air, and the answering of its young that gives the bird's song its true relish. These united, improve each other, and raise the mind to a state of the highest yet most harmless exultation. Nothing can in this situation of mind be more pleasing than to see the lark warbling upon the wing, raising its note as it soars until it seems lost in the immense heights above us; the note continuing, the bird itself unseen; to see it then descending with a swell as it comes from the clouds, yet sinking by degrees as it approaches its nest, the spot where all its affections are centred; the spot that has prompted all this joy.

Goldsmith, Natural History.

BOOKS.

THESE are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you.

Richard de Bury, Philobiblon.

BOOKS.

THE reading of books, what is it but conversing with the wisest men of all ages and countries, who thereby communicate to us their most deliberate thoughts, choicest notions, and best inventions, couched in good expression, and digested in exact method? Barrow, Sermons, liv.

BOOKS.

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them, to be as active as that soul was, whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. As good almost to kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature-God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious lifeblood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. Milton, Areopagitica.

D

BOOKS.

HERE is the best solitary company in the world, and in this particular, chiefly, excelling any other, that in my study I am sure to converse with none but wise men ; but abroad it is impossible for me to avoid the society of fools. What an advantage have I, by this good fellowship, that, besides the help which I receive from hence, in reference to my life after this life, I can enjoy the life of so many ages before I lived! That I can be acquainted with the passages of three or four thousand years ago, as if they were the weekly occurrences. Here, without travelling so far as Endor, I can call up the ablest spirits of those times, the learnedest philosophers, the wisest counsellors, the greatest generals, and make them serviceable to me. I can make bold with the best jewels they have in their treasury, with the same freedom that the Israelites borrowed of the Egyptians, and, without suspicion of felony, make use of them as mine own.

Sir William Waller.

BOOKS.

BUT books are still my highest joy,
These earliest please, and latest cloy.
Sometimes o'er distant climes I stray,
By guides experienced taught the way;
The wonders of each region view,
From frozen Lapland to Peru;

Bound o'er rough seas, and mountains bare,
Yet ne'er forsake my elbow chair.

Soame Jenyns, Epistle written in the Country.

BOOKS.

Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from being a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the

crossness of men and things, compose our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation. Jeremy Collier.

BOOKS.

I NEVER travel without books, either in peace or war, and yet sometimes I pass over several days, and sometimes months, without looking on them. I will read them by-andby, say I to myself, or to-morrow, or when I please, and in the interim time steals away without any inconvenience. For it is not to be imagined to what degree I please myself, and rest content in this consideration, that I have them by me, to divert myself with them when I am so disposed, and to call to mind what an ease and refreshment they are to my life. 'Tis the best viaticum I have yet found out for this human journey, and very much lament those men of understanding who are unprovided of them.

Montaigne, Essays, lxxvi.

BOOKS.

IN literature I am fond of confining myself to the best company, which consists chiefly of my old acquaintance, with whom I am desirous of becoming more intimate; and I suspect that nine times out of ten it is more profitable, if not more agreeable, to read an old book over again, than to read a new one for the first time. If I hear of a new poem, for instance, I ask myself first, whether it is superior to Homer, Shakspeare, or Virgil; and, in the next place, whether I have all these authors completely at my fingers' ends. And when both questions have been answered in the negative, I infer that it is better (and to me it is certainly pleasanter) to give such time as I have to bestow on the