116 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 



that excites the powerful impression of awe or amazement, 

 on the yet more touching and inexpressible feelings of the 

 heart, produces a profound and speechless silence. Lovers 

 and friends, old men and little children, sit silently together 

 for hours, looking at each other in rapt admiration, their 

 souls mingling and blending together, conversing telegraph- 

 ically with each other in tones that human tongues can not 

 utter, because only human words can dwell on human lips ; 

 but the spirit sits above the tongue and has its own pecul- 

 iar language, which it alone knows how to express. Some- 

 thing of this effect seems to be produced by the chirping of 

 the domestic cricket. People whom the world call brain- 

 less, those who can not claim a spark of romance or poet- 

 ry, as well as those in whom the intellectual fire burns 

 brightest, seem very generally to be calmed into silent, pen- 

 sive, meditative thought by the mere sound of this little 

 insect rubbing its wings together! What there is in the 

 sound that is attractive, or why it produces such effect, is 

 more than any one has tried to fathom ; but the fact is ac- 

 knowledged by all, and there are few who will not say with 

 Cowper : 



" Though in voice and shape they be 

 Formed as if akin to thee, 

 Thou surpassest, happier far, 

 Happiest Grasshopper that are. 

 Theirs is but a summer's song, 

 Thine endures the winter long, 

 Unimpair'd, and shrill, and clear, 

 Melody throughout the year. 



Neither night nor dawn of day 

 Puts a period to thy play ; 

 Sing then, and extend thy span 

 Far beyond the date of man. 

 Wretched man, whose years are spent 

 In repining discontent, 

 Lives not, aged though he be, 

 Half a span compared with thee." 



