At the Water’s Edge 
arvensis—which has secured to the family name 
an eminence in some respects superior even to 
that of our own superb thrushes. The con- 
tagion of its rapture has been caught by many 
a famous poet—the fiery Shelley, the reposeful 
Wordsworth, the genial, roguish and fatherly 
old Chaucer. With the last, the lark was an 
evident favorite ; and, although he did not in- 
dulge in any such lengthy, formal, and elabo- 
rate apostrophe to the exalted songster as will 
at once occur to the reader of Wordsworth and 
Shelley, his brief and frequent allusions, inci- 
dental, affectionate, and spontaneous as they 
are, betoken quite as deep and fervent admi- 
ration. Every lover of this benignant and 
intensely human poet—‘‘a genial day in an 
English spring,’’ as a critic happily styles him 
—will recall the passage in the ‘‘ Canterbury 
Tales,’’ beginning 
‘* And now the larke, messager of daye, 
Saluéth in hir song the morwe graye;” 
wherein he reverts, with the dainty touch of 
the genuine poet, to his favorite theme—the 
beautiful in nature. 
Among many pleasing memories of German 
life, I recall one with peculiar distinctness—a 
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