CARDINAL GROSBEAK, OR RED-BIRD. 525 



calist into a lively, pathetic, and harmonious reverie. 

 So highly were these birds esteemed for their melody, 

 that according to Gemelli Careri, the Spaniards of Ha- 

 vana, in a time of public distress and scarcity, bought 

 so many of these birds, with which a vessel was partly 

 freighted, from Florida, that the sum expended, at 10 

 dollars apiece, amounted to no less than 18,000 dollars ! 

 Indeed Latham admits that the notes of our Cardi- 

 nal " are almost equal to those of the Nightingale," the 

 sweetest feathered minstrel of Europe. The style of their 

 performance is, however, wholly different. The bold 

 martial strains of the Red Bird, though relieved by ten- 

 der and exquisite touches, possess not the enchanting 

 pathos, the elevated and varied expression of the far- 

 famed Philomel, nor yet those contrasted tones, which, 

 in the solemn stilness of the growing night, fall at times 

 into a soothing whisper, or slowly rise and quicken 

 into a loud and cheering warble. A strain of almost sen- 

 timental tenderness and sadness pervades by turns the 

 song of the Nightingale ; it flows like a torrent, or dies 

 away like an echo ; his varied ecstasies seem poured to 

 the pale moon-beams, and like the desponding lover, seek- 

 ing to hide his grief in solitude, his sapphic lays, wast- 

 ed, as it were, in the desert air, now meet with no re- 

 sponse but the sighing zephyr or the ever-murmuring 

 brook. The notes of our Cardinal are as full of hilarity 

 as of tender expression ; his whistling call is uttered in 

 the broad glare of day, and is heard predominant over 

 most of the feathered choir by which he is surrounded. 

 His responding mate is the perpetual companion of all 

 his joys and cares ; simple an(rcontent in his attachment, 

 he is a stranger to capricious romance of feeling ; and 

 the shades of melancholy, however feeble and transient, 

 find no harbour in his preoccupied affections. 



