n
distance, and disappears in the silent wood. Not long silent. It is a
spring-day in our imagination--his clay-wall nest holds his mate at the
foot of the Silver-fir, and he is now perched on its pinnacle. That
thrilling hymn will go vibrating down the stem till it reaches her
brooding breast. The whole vernal air is filled with the murmur and the
glitter of insects; but the blackbird's song is over all other symptoms
of love and life, and seems to call upon the leaves to unfold into
happiness. It is on that one Tree-top, conspicuous among many thousands
on the fine breast of wood--here and there, a pine mingling not unmeetly
with the prevailing oak--that the forest-minstrel sits in his
inspirations. The rock above is one which we have often climbed. There
lies the glorious Loch and all its islands--one dearer than the rest to
eye and imagination, with its old Religious House--year after year
crumbling away unheeded into more entire ruin. Far away, a sea of
mountains, with all their billowing summits distinct in the sky, and now
uncertain and changeful as the clouds. Yonder Castle stands well on the
peninsula among the trees which the herons inhabit. Those coppice-woods
on the other shore, stealing up to the heathery rocks and sprinkled
birches, are the haunts of the roe. That great glen, that stretches
sullenly away into the distant darkness, has been for ages the birth and
the death-place of the red-deer. The cry of an Eagle! There he hangs
poised in the sunlight, and now he flies off towards the sea. But again
the song of our BLACKBIRD rises like "a steam of rich distilled
perfumes," and our heart comes back to him upon the pinnacle of his own
Home-tree. The source of song is yet in the happy creature's heart--but
the song itself has subsided, like a rivulet that has been rejoicing in
a sudden shower among the hills; the bird drops down among the balmy
branches, and the other faint songs which that bold anthem had drowned,
are heard at a distance, and seem to encroach every moment on the
silence.

You say you greatly prefer the song of the THRUSH. Pray, why set such
delightful singers by the ears? We dislike the habit that very many
people have of trying everything by a scale. Nothing seems to them to be
good positively--only relatively. Now, it is true wisdom to be charmed
with what is charming, to live in it for the time being, and compare the
emotion with no former emotion whatever--unless it be unconsciously in