love's meinie. 73 



flies up to the hoiise-roof, and thence, i7i the form of the 

 swallow, gaiides the arrows of vengeance for the violation 

 of the sanctities of home. 



80. To-day, then, I believe verilv for the first time, I 

 have been able to put before you some means of guidance 

 to understand the beauty of the bird which lives with you 

 in your own houses, and which purifies for you, from its 

 insect pestilence, tlie air that you breathe. Thus the 

 sweet domestic thing has done, for men, at least these 

 four thousand years. She has been their companion, not 

 of the home merely, but of the hearth, and the threshold ; 

 companion only endeared by departure, and showing 

 better her loving-kindness by her faithful return. Type 

 sometimes of the stranger, she has softened us to hospi- 

 tality; type always of the suppliant, she has enchanted us 

 to mercy ; and in her feeble presence, the cowardice, or 

 the wrath, of sacrilege has changed into the fidelities of 

 sanctuary. Herald of our summer, she glances through 

 our days of gladness ; numberer of our years, she would 

 teach us to apply our hearts to wisdom ; — and yet, so little 

 have we regarded her, that this very day, scarcely able to 

 gather from all I can find told of her enough to explain 

 80 much as the unfolding of her wings, I can tell you 

 nothing of her life — nothing of her journeying : I cannot 

 learn how she builds, nor how^ she chooses the place 

 of her wandering, nor how she traces the path of her 

 return. Eemaining thus blind and careless to the true 



ministries of the humble creature whom God has really 

 4 



