180 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



daws sweeping round and round, mounting higher 

 and higher until they were above the cross; and 

 then from that vast height they would hurl themselves 

 suddenly downwards towards the great building 

 and the earth. All at once, as we watched a bird 

 coming down, he threw his arms up and cried ex- 

 citedly, "Oh, to fly like that!" 



And you, said I to myself, born in a hideous grimy 

 manufacturing town, breathing iron dust, a worker 

 in an ugly material engaged in making ugly things, 

 have yet more poetry and romance, more joy in all 

 that is beautiful, than one could find in any native 

 of this soft lovely green south country! 



Does not this fact strike every observer of his 

 fellows who knows both north and south intimately ? 

 How strange then to think that well-nigh all that is 

 best in our poetic literature has been produced by 

 southerners — by Englishmen in the southern half 

 of the country! Undoubtedly the poetic feeling is 

 stronger and more general in the north, and we can 

 only conclude that from this seemingly most favour- 

 able soil the divine flower of genius springeth not. 



To return to my commercial traveller. I told him 

 where to go in search of the nightingale, and meeting 

 him later that evening asked him if he had succeeded. 

 Yes, he replied, he had found and listened for some 

 time to its song. It was a fine song, unlike that of 

 any other bird known to him, but it did not come up 

 to his expectations, and he had formed the idea that 

 this bird was probably not a very good specimen of 

 its kind. It consoled him to be told that he was 



