JANUARY. 23 



sently be dwelling in the heart of regions which 

 we long, in vain,, to know, and whither our tra- 

 vellers toil, in vain, to penetrate, that they 

 will anon affix their nests to the Chinese pa- 

 goda, the Indian temple, or, beneath the equa- 

 tor, to the palm- thatched eaves of the African 

 hut; that the small birds which populate our 

 summer hedges and fields will quickly spread 

 themselves with the cuckoo, and its avant cou- 

 rier, the wryneck, over the warm regions be- 

 yond the pillars of Hercules, and the wilds of 

 the Levant, of Greece and Syria ; the nightin- 

 gale will be serenading in the chestnut groves of 

 Italy, and the rose-gardens of Persia ; that the 

 thrush and the fieldfare, which share our win- 

 ter, will pour out triumphant music in their 

 native wastes, in the sudden summers of Scan- 

 dinavia; that even some of the wild fowls 

 which frequent our winter streams will return 

 with the spring, to the far tracts of North Ame- 

 rica ; and when we call to our imagination the 

 desolate rocks in the lonely ocean, the craggy 

 and misty isles of the Orkneys and Shetlands, 

 where others congregate in myriads ; or the 

 wild-swan, which sometimes pays a visit to our 

 largest and most secluded waters, rewinging its 

 way through the lofty regions of the air to Ice- 



