76 THE BIRDS OF SHERWOOD FOREST. 
With skirmish and capricious passagings, 
And murmurs musical, and swift jug, jug, 
And one low piping sound more sweet than all, 
Stirring the air with such a harmony, 
That should you close your eyes you might almost 
Forget it was not day.” 
There is nothing sad or sorrowful in its sweet tones ; 
but in perfect harmony with the quietude of a summer's 
evening, when all the toil and bustle of the day is 
hushed, it breathes a sense of calm and peaceful happi- 
ness. 
Much, no doubt, as Coleridge has so well expressed 
in the lines I have quoted above, must be allowed for 
the state of the listener’s feelings. Where the mind of 
such a one is filled with sorrow or care, he would very 
naturally invest the song with a plaintive, or even a 
melancholy character; but, with a mind at rest, and 
filled with thoughts of Him whose power and goodness 
have so greatly contributed to our earthly enjoyment, 
surely it speaks of nothing but thankful gladness—a 
tribute of praise to the great Creator. 
The conjecture above expressed is illustrated by an 
interesting incident related by the Duke de Cabellino, 
one of the noble band of Neapolitan patriots who, in 
1859, sought a refuge on our shores from the cruel 
tyranny of the Bourbons. In a letter he wrote on land- 
ing in Ireland to the Cork Daily Reporter, giving an ° 
account of the sufferings which he and Baron Poerio and 
others endured in the stifling prison cells of Monte 
Fiesco, he says :— 
“A nightingale, as if on a mission from Nature, ap- 
parently feeling for our sorrows and solicitude, used to 
come to the boughs of a mulberry-tree, and with his 
plaintive song he expressed our griefs, so that he became 
