88 THE STUDY OF NATURE. 



in the smallest. With the small birds, unostentatious as they are, 

 modestly and seriously clad, art begins, and, on certain points, 

 rises higher than the sphere of man. Far from equalling the 

 nightingale, we have been unable to express or to render an account 

 of his sublime song. 



The eagle, then, is in these pages dethroned ; the nightingale 

 reigns in his stead. In that moral crescendo, where the bird con- 

 tinuously advances in self-culture, the apex and the supreme point 

 are naturally discovered, not in brutal strength, so easily overpassed 

 by man, but in a puissance of art, of soul, and of aspiration which 

 man has not attained, and which, beyond this world, transports 

 him in a moment to the further spheres. 



High justice and tnie, because it is clear- visioned and tender ! 

 Feeble on too many points, I doubt not, this book is strong in 

 tenderness and faith. It is one, constant and faithful. Nothing 

 makes it divaricate. Above death and its false divorce, through life 

 and the masks which disguise its unity, it flies, it loves to hover, from 

 nest to nest, from o^gg to &gg, from love to the love of God. 



La IIeve, near Havke, September 21, 1855. 







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