ot shun
the day, and is sometimes seen hovering unhurt in the sunshine. The red
or black grouse flies as if pursued by a ghost; but the Snowy Owl,
little slower than the eagle, in dreadful silence overtakes his flight,
and then death is sudden and sure. Hawking is, or was, a noble
pastime--and we have now prevented our eyes from glancing at
Jer-falcon, Peregrine, or Goshawk; but Owling, we do not doubt, would be
noways inferior sport; and were it to become prevalent in modern times,
as Hawking was in times of old, why, each lady, as Venus already fair,
with an Owl on her wrist, would look as wise as Minerva.

But our soul sickens at all those dreams of blood! and fain would turn
away from fierce eye, cruel beak, and tearing talon--war-weapons of them
that delight in wounds and death--to the contemplation of creatures
whose characteristics are the love of solitude--shy gentleness of
manner--the tender devotion of mutual attachment--and, in field or
forest, a lifelong passion for peace.

CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.

FOURTH CANTICLE.

Welcome then the RING-DOVE--the QUEST--or CUSHAT, for that is the very
bird we have had in our imagination. There is his full-length portrait,
stealthily sketched as the Solitary was sitting on a tree. You must
catch him napping, indeed, before he will allow you an opportunity of
colouring him on the spot from nature. It is not that he is more jealous
or suspicious of man's approach than other bird; for never shall we
suffer ourselves to believe that any tribe of the descendants of the
Dove that brought to the Ark the olive tidings of reappearing earth, can
in their hearts hate or fear the race of the children of man. But Nature
has made the Cushat a lover of the still forest-gloom; and therefore,
when his lonesome haunts are disturbed or intruded on, he flies to some
yet profounder, some more central solitude, and folds his wing in the
hermitage of a Yew, sown in the time of the ancient Britons.

It is the Stock-Dove, we believe, not the Ring-Dove, from whom are
descended all the varieties of the races of Doves. What tenderer praise
can we give them all, than that the Dove is the emblem of Innocence, and
that the name of innocence--not of frailty--is Woman? When Hamlet said
the reverse, he was thinking, you know, of the Queen--not of Ophelia. Is
not woman by nature chaste as the Dove--as the Dove faithful? Sitting
all alone with her babe in her bosom, is she not as a Dove devoted