

■:^ THE POLE. 



AQUATIC BIRDS. 



That powerful fairy which endows man with most of 

 his blessings and misfortunes, Imagination, sets herself to 

 work to travestie nature for him in a hundred ways. 

 In all which exceeds his energies or wounds his sensa- 

 tions, in all the necessities which oveiTule the harmony of 

 __ the world, he is tempted to see and to curse a maleficent 



^^^^ will. One writer has made a book against the Alps; a 



^^ poet has foolishly placed the throne of evil among those 



beneficent glaciers which are the reservoir of the waters of Europe, 

 which pour forth its rivers and make its fertility. Others, still more 

 absurdly, have vented their wrath upon the ices of the Pole, misunder- 



