ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 325 



that where the bird is least exposed to slaughter. The land of William 

 Tell knew how to place before her children a juster and more exalted 

 object when they liberated their country. 



****** 



France is not cruel. Why, then, this love of murder, this exter- 

 mination of tlie animal world ? 



It is the rnvpatient people, the young people, the childish people, 

 in a rude and restless childhood. If they cannot be doing in creating, 

 they will be doing by destroying. 



But what they most fatally injure is — themselves ! A violent 

 education, stormily impassioned in love or severit}^, criLshes in the 

 child, withers, chokes up the firet moral flower of natural sensitiveness, 

 all that was purest of the maternal milk, the germ of universal love 

 which rarely blooms again. 



Among too many cliildren we are saddened by their almost incred- 

 ible sterility. A few recover from it in the long circle of life, when 

 they have become experienced and enlightened men. But the first 

 freshness of the heart? It shall return no more.* 



How is it that this nation, otherwise born under such felicitous 

 circumstances, is, with rare and local exceptions, accursed with so 

 singular an incapacity for harmony ? It has its own peculiar songs, 

 its charming little melodies of vivacity and mirth. But it needs a 

 prolonged effort, a special education, to attain to harmony. 









Page 158. Flattening of the brain. — The weight of the brain, 



compared with that of the body, is, in the 



Ostrich, in the ratio of 1 to 1200 



Goose, 1 to 360 



Duck, 1 to 257 



Eagle 1 to 160 



* Compare Byron, in " Don Jean." 



