6 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
sac, a stopping-place, of all argument of the 
question. Indeed, it is a very romantic dis- 
tance that separates the bird from most of us. 
Chaucer’s groves and Shakespeare’s woods 
shake out from their leaves a fragrance that 
reaches us along with a song which is half the 
bird’s and half the poet’s. We connect the 
nightingale’s music with a dream of chivalry, 
troubadours, and medieval castles. It is as 
dear to him who has heard it only in the 
changes rung by the Persian, French, and 
English bards as it is to him whose chamber 
window opens on a choice haunt of the bird 
in rural England. 
I might dare to go further and claim that I, 
who have never heard a nightingale sing, can 
say with truth that its music is, in a certain 
way, as familiar to me as the sound of a run- 
ning stream or the sough of a spring breeze. 
I often find myself reluctantly shaking off 
something like a recollection of having some- 
where, in some dim old grove, heard the voice 
that Keats imprisoned in his matchless ode. 
There is a sort of aerial perspective in the 
mere name of the nightingale; it is like some 
of those classical allusions which bring into a 
modern essay suggestions with an infinite dis- 
tance in them. So thoroughly has this been 
felt that it may safely be said that the nightin- 
gale has been more frequently mentioned by 
our American writers, good, bad, and indiffer- 
ent, than any one of our native birds. No 
doubt it ought to provoke a smile, this gushing 
about a music one has never heard; but, like 
the music of the spheres and the roar of the 
ocean, the nightingale’s voice is common 
property, and we all take it as a sort of hered- 
