82 NIGHTINGALE 



to its young, and its grief at their loss, have been noticed 

 by many writers, ancient and modern. Our friend, the 

 Rev. E. J. Moor, sends us, on this subject, a memo- 

 randum from his journal : ' One evening while I was at 

 college," he says, ' happening to drink tea with the late 

 Rev. J. Lambert, fellow of Trinity College, he told me 

 the following facts illustrative of Virgil's extreme accuracy 

 in describing natural objects. We had been speaking of 

 those well-known lovely lines in the fourth Georgic on 

 the Nightingale's lamentation for the loss of her young, 

 when Mr. Lambert told me that, riding once through one 

 of the toll-gates near Cambridge, he observed the keeper 

 of the gate and his wife, who were aged persons, ap- 

 parently much dejected. Upon inquiring into the cause 

 of their uneasiness, the man assured Mr. Lambert that he 

 and his wife had both been made very unhappy by a 

 Nightingale, which had built in their garden, and had the 

 day before been robbed of its young. This loss she had 

 been deploring in such a melancholy strain all the night, 

 as not only to deprive him and his wife of sleep, but also 

 to leave them in the morning full of sorrow ; from which 

 they had evidently not recovered when Mr. Lambert 

 saw them. ' " 



