their companion, not of the home merely, but of the
hearth, and the threshold; companion only endeared by departure, and
showing better her loving-kindness by her faithful return. Type
sometimes of the stranger, she has softened us to hospitality; type
always of the suppliant, she has enchanted us to mercy; and in her
feeble presence, the cowardice, or the wrath, of sacrilege has changed
into the fidelities of sanctuary. Herald of our summer, she glances
through our days of gladness; numberer of our years, she would teach us
to apply our hearts to wisdom;--and yet, so little have we regarded
her, that this very day, scarcely able to gather from all I can find
told of her enough to explain so much as the unfolding of her wings, I
can tell you nothing of her life--nothing of her journeying: I cannot
learn how she builds, nor how she chooses the place of her wandering,
nor how she traces the path of her return. Remaining thus blind and
careless to the true ministries of the humble creature whom God has
really sent to serve us, we in our pride, thinking ourselves surrounded
by the pursuivants of the sky, can yet only invest them with majesty by
giving them the calm of the bird's motion, and shade of the bird's
plume:--and after all, it is well for us, if, when even for God's best
mercies, and in His temples marble-built, we think that, "with angels
and archangels, and all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify His
glorious name"--well for us, if our attempt be not only an insult, and
His ears open rather to the inarticulate and unintended praise, of "the
Swallow, twittering from her straw-built shed."

LECTURE III.

THE DABCHICKS.

81. I believe that somewhere I have already observed, but permit
myself, for immediate use, to repeat what I cannot but think the
sagacious observation,--that the arrangement of any sort of animals
must be, to say the least, imperfect, if it be founded only on the
characters of their feet. And, of all creatures, one would think birds
were those which, continually dispensing with the use of their feet,
would require for their classification some attention also to be paid
to their bodies and wings,--not to say their heads and tails.
Nevertheless, the ornithological arrangement at present in vogue may
suffice for most scientific persons; but in grouping birds, so that the
groups may be understood and remembered by children, I must try to make
them a little more generally descriptive.