170 BEAUTIFUL BIRDS 
beautiful. It is dead beauty then; the beauty of 
life — which is the highest beauty of all—is gone 
out of them. 
Now you can see many and many beautiful things 
that never had life in them, though some, such as beau- 
tiful statues and pictures, imitate life so marvellously 
that you would almost think they were alive. And 
you can admire these beautiful things, and take plea- 
sure in looking at them, without having to feel sorry 
that they once were alive and happy, but have been 
killed for you to look at. Surely you would not wish a 
beautiful, happy bird to be killed, just for you to look 
at. You would not even wish it to be put ina cage and 
kept alive, in a way in which it could not be happy. 
No, you would rather know that it was alive and 
happy in its own country, and only imagine what it 
was like, and how beautiful it was. That is much 
the best way of seeing creatures, if we have no other 
way without killing them or putting them in prison— 
to imagine them; and there is ever so. much more 
pleasure in imagining creatures alive and happy than 
in seeing them dead or wretched. It is a very fine 
thing, I can tell you, to zmagine, and some people can 
do it a great deal better than others. There are 
people who cannot do it at all, but we do not want 
birds killed for stupid persons. People who cannot 
imagine can do capitally without seeing, either — 
