ould be immediately
recognized. And the effect of the painter's conscious deference, and of
the equally conscious pride of the boys, as they stood to be painted,
has been somewhat to shorten the power of the one, and to abase the
dignity of the other. And thus, in the midst of my admiration of the
youths' beautiful faces, and natural quality of majesty, set off by all
splendors of dress and courtesies of art, I could not forbear
questioning with myself what the true value was, in the scales of
creation, of these fair human beings who set so high a value on
themselves; and,--as if the only answer,--the words kept repeating
themselves in my ear, "Ye are of more value than many sparrows."

2. Passeres, [Greek: strouthos]--the things that open their wings, and
are not otherwise noticeable; small birds of the land and wood; the
food of the serpent, of man, or of the stronger creatures of their own
kind,--that even these, though among the simplest and obscurest of
beings, have yet price in the eyes of their Maker, and that the death
of one of them cannot take place but by His permission, has long been
the subject of declamation in our pulpits, and the ground of much
sentiment in nursery education. But the declamation is so aimless, and
the sentiment so hollow, that, practically, the chief interest of the
leisure of mankind has been found in the destruction of the creatures
which they professed to believe even the Most High would not see perish
without pity; and, in recent days, it is fast becoming the only
definition of aristocracy, that the principal business of its life is
the killing of sparrows.

Sparrows, or pigeons, or partridges, what does it matter? "Centum mille
perdrices plumbo confecit;"[4] that is, indeed, too often the sum of
the life of an English lord; much questionable now, if _indeed_ of
more value than that of many sparrows.

[4] The epitaph on Count Zachdarm, in "Sartor Resartus."

3. Is it not a strange fact, that, interested in nothing so much for
the last two hundred years, as in his horses, he yet left it to the
farmers of Scotland to relieve draught horses from the bearing-rein?[5]
Is it not one equally strange that, master of the forests of England
for a thousand years, and of its libraries for three hundred, he left
the natural history of birds to be written by a card-printer's lad of
Newcastle?[6] Written, and not written, for indeed we have no natural
history of birds written yet. It cann