rest. Calm flows the current of human life, on that
gracious day, throughout all the glens and valleys of Scotland, as a
stream that wimples in the morning sunshine, freshened but not flooded
with the soft-falling rain of a summer night. The spiral smoke-wreath
above the cottage is not calmer than the motion within. True, that the
wood warblers do not cease their songs; but the louder they sing, the
deeper is the stillness. And what perfect blessedness, when it is only
joy that is astir in rest!

Loud-flapping Cushat! it was thou that inspiredst these solemn fancies;
and we have only to wish thee, for thy part contributed to our
Recreations, now that the acorns of autumn must be well-nigh consumed,
many a plentiful repast, amid the multitude of thy now congregated
comrades, in the cleared stubble lands--as severe weather advances, and
the ground becomes covered with snow, regales undisturbed by fowler, on
the tops of turnip, rape, and other cruciform plants, which all of thy
race affect so passionately--and soft blow the sea-breezes on thy
unruffled plumage, when thou takest thy winter's walk with kindred
myriads on the shelly shore, and for a season minglest with gull and
seamew--apart every tribe, one from the other, in the province of its
own peculiar instinct--yet all mysteriously taught to feed or sleep
together within the roar or margin of the main.

Sole-sitting Cushat! We see thee through the yew-tree's shade, on some
day of the olden time, but when or where we remember not--for what has
place or time to do with the vision of a dream? That we see thee is all
we know, and that serenely beautiful thou art! Most pleasant is it to
dream, and to know we dream! By sweet volition we keep ourselves half
asleep and half awake; and all our visions of thought, as they go
swimming along, partake at once of reality and imagination. Fiction and
truth--clouds, shadows, phantoms and phantasms--ether, sunshine,
substantial forms and sounds that have a being, blending together in a
scene created by us, and partly impressed upon us, and which one motion
of the head on the pillow may dissolve, or deepen into more oppressive
delight! In some such dreaming state of mind are we now; and, gentle
reader, if thou art broad awake, lay aside the visionary volume, or read
a little longer, and likely enough is it that thou too mayest fall half
asleep. If so, let thy drowsy eyes still pursue the glimmering
paragraphs--and wafted away wilt th