eT, 
9 
plumage renders his movements noiseless, and the rustling of the 
wings is never heard, any more than his tread on earth, over which 
he bounds with amazing sprightliness.” You know how much 
importance I have always given, among the fine arts to good 
dancing. Ifyou think of it, you will find one of the robin’s very 
chief ingratiatory faculties is his dainty and delicate movement, -— 
his footing is featly here and there. Whatever prettiness there may 
be in his red breast, at his brightest he can always be outshone by 
a brickbat. But if he is rationally proud of anything about him, 
I should think a robin must be proud of his legs. Hundreds of 
birds have longer and more imposing ones—but for real neatness, 
finish, and precision of action, commend me to his fine little ankles, 
and fine little feet ; this long stilted process, as you know, corres- 
ponding to our ankle-bone, commend me, I say, to the robin for 
use of his ankles —he is, of all birds, the pre-eminent and character- 
istic Hopper ; None other so light, so pert, or so swift.” Talking 
of the feathers ‘I have no doubt the Darwinian theory on the 
subject is that the feathers of birds once stuck up all erect, like the 
bristles of a brush, and have only been blown flat by continual 
flying. Nay, we might even sufficiently represent the general 
manner of conclusion in the Darwinian system by the statement 
that if you fasten a hair brush to a mill-wheel, with the handle 
forward, so as to develop itself into a neck by moving always in 
the same direction, and within continual hearing of a steam 
whistle, after a certain number of revolutions the hair brush will 
fall in love with the whistle ; they will marry, lay an egg, and the 
produce will be a nightingale.” Again ‘‘let us examine a feather 
from his breast. I said, just now, he might be at once outshone 
by a brickbat. Indeed, the day before yesterday, sleeping at Lich- 
field, and seeing, the first thing when I woke in the morning (for 
I never put down the blinds of my bedroom windows), the not un- 
common sight in an English country town of an entire house front 
of very neat, and very flat, and very red bricks, with very exactly 
squared square windows in it; and not feeling myself in any wise 
gratified or improved by the spectacle, I was thinking how in this, 
as in all other good, the too much destroyed all. The breadth of 
a robin’s breast in brick-red is delicious, but a whole house front 
of brick-red, as vivid, isalarming. And yet one cannot generalize 
even that trite moral with any safety—for infinite breadth of green 
is delightful, however green; and of sea or sky, however blue. 
You must note, however, that the robin’s charm is greatly helped 
’ by the pretty space of grey plumage which separates the red from 
the brown back, and sets it off to its best advantage. ‘There is no 
great brilliancy in it, even so relieved; only the finish of it is ex- 
quisite. If you separate a single feather, you will find it more like 
a transparent hollow shell than a feather (so delicately rounded the 
