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 01 tlie animal world ? 



It is the impatient people, the young people, the childish p)eople, 

 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 severity, crushes in the 

 child, withers, chokes up the fii"st 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 children 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 hrain. — The weight of the brain, 



compared with that of the body, is, in the 



Ostrich, in the ratio of 1 ^o 1200 



Goose, 1 to 360 



Duck, Ito 257 



Eagle Ito 160 



* Compare Byron, in " Don Jean." 



