on Sunday?" said once a little boy to us--and we
answered him in a lyrical ballad, which we have lost. But although the
birds certainly do sing on Sunday--behaviour that with our small gentle
Calvinist, who dearly loved them, caused some doubts of their being so
innocent as during the week-days they appeared to be--we cannot set
down their fault to the score of ignorance. Is it in the holy
superstition of the world-wearied heart that man believes the inferior
creatures to be conscious of the calm of the Sabbath, and that they know
it to be the day of our rest? Or is it that we transfer the feeling of
our inward calm to all the goings-on of Nature, and thus imbue them with
a character of reposing sanctity, existing only in our own spirits? Both
solutions are true. The instincts of those creatures we know only in
their symptoms and their effects, in the wonderful range of action over
which they reign. Of the instincts themselves--as feelings or ideas--we
know not anything, nor ever can know; for an impassable gulf separates
the nature of those that may be to perish, from ours that are to live
for ever. But their power of memory, we must believe, is not only
capable of minutest retention, but also stretches back to afar--and some
power or other they do possess, that gathers up the past experience into
rules of conduct that guide them in their solitary or gregarious life.
Why, therefore, should not the birds of Scotland know the Sabbath-day?
On that day the Water-Ouzel is never disturbed by angler among the
murmurs of his own waterfall; and, as he flits down the banks and braes
of the burn, he sees no motion, he hears no sound about the cottage that
is the boundary of his furthest flight--for "the dizzying mill-wheel
rests." The merry-nodding rooks, that in spring-time keep following the
very heels of the ploughman--may they not know it to be Sabbath, when
all the horses are standing idle in the field, or taking a gallop by
themselves round the head-rig? Quick of hearing are birds--one and
all--and in every action of their lives are obedient to sounds. May they
not, then--do they not connect a feeling of perfect safety with the
tinkle of the small kirk-bell? The very jay himself is not shy of people
on their way to worship. The magpie, that never sits more than a minute
at a time in the same place on a Saturday, will on the Sabbath remain on
the kirkyard wall with all the composure of a dove. The whole feathered
creation kno