te to make it the sweetest, the happiest, the
welcomest singer that was ever winged, like the high angels of God's love.
It is the living ecstasy of joy when it mounts up into its "glorious
privacy of light."

2. On the earth it is timid, silent, and bashful, as if not at home, and
not sure of its right to be there at all. It is rather homely withal,
having nothing in feather, feature, or form to attract notice. It is
seemingly made to be heard, not seen, reversing the old axiom addressed to
children when getting noisy.

3. Its mission is music, and it floods a thousand acres of the blue sky
with it several times a day. Out of that palpitating speck of living joy
there wells forth a sea of twittering ecstasy upon the morning and evening
air. It does not ascend by gyrations, like the eagle and birds of prey. It
mounts up like a human aspiration.

4. It seems to spread its wings and to be lifted straight upwards out of
sight by the afflatus of its own happy heart. To pour out this in
undulating rivulets of rhapsody is apparently the only motive of its
ascension. This it is that has made it so loved of all generations.

5. It is the singing angel of man's nearest heaven, whose vital breath is
music. Its sweet warbling is only the metrical palpitation of its life of
joy. It goes up over the rooftrees of the rural hamlet on the wings of its
song, as if to train the human soul to trial flights heavenward.

6. Never did the Creator put a voice of such volume into so small a living
thing. It is a marvel--almost a miracle. In a still hour you can hear it
at nearly a mile's distance. When its form is lost in the hazy lace work
of the sun's rays above, it pours down upon you all the thrilling
semitones of its song as distinctly as if it were warbling to you in your
window.

DEFINITIONS.--1. Ec'sta-sy, overmastering joy, rapture. 2. Ax'i-om, a
self-evident truth. 3. Pal'pi-tat-ing, throbbing, fluttering. Wells,
pours, flows. Gy-ra'tions, circular or spiral motions. 4. Af--fla'tus,
breath, inspiration. Un'du-la-ting, rising and falling like waves.
Rhap'so-dy, that which is uttered in a disconnected way under strong
excitement. Gen-er-a'tion, the mass of beings at one period. 5.
Met'ric-al, arranged in measures, as poetry and music. Roof 'tree, the
beam in the angle of a roof, hence the roof itself. Ham'let, a little
cluster of houses.

LXII. HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE.

William Collins (b. 1721, d. 1759) was born at Chichest