The Project Gutenberg EBook of Love's Meinie, by John Ruskin

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Title: Love's Meinie
Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds

Author: John Ruskin

Release Date: April 18, 2007 [EBook #21138]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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LOVE'S MEINIE.

THREE LECTURES ON GREEK AND ENGLISH BIRDS.

By

JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., D.C.L.

HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD; AND
HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD

THIRD EDITION

GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON
AND
156, CHARING CROSS ROAD, LONDON

1897

[_All rights reserved_]

CONTENTS.

PAGE

PREFACE v

LECTURE I.
THE ROBIN 1

LECTURE II.
THE SWALLOW 25

LECTURE III.
THE DABCHICKS 52

APPENDIX 107

PREFACE.

BRANTWOOD, 9_th June_, 1881.

_Quarter past five, morning._

The birds chirping feebly,--mostly chaffinches answering each other,
the rest discomposed, I fancy, by the June snow;[1] the lake neither
smooth nor rippled, but like a surface of perfectly bright glass, ill
cast; the lines of wave few and irregular, like flaws in the planes of
a fine crystal.

[1] The summits of the Old Man, of Wetherlam, and Helvellyn,
were all white, on the morning when this was written.

I see this book was begun eight years ago;--then intended to contain
only four Oxford lectures: but the said lectures also 'intended' to
contain the cream of forty volumes of scientific ornithology. Which
intentions, all and sundry, having gone, Carlyle would have said, to
water, and more piously-minded persons, to fire, I am obliged now to
cast my materials into another form: and here, at all events, is a
bundle of what is readiest under my hand. The nat