102 A YEAR IN A LANCASHIRE GARDEN. 



Then how delightful is the boast, which Mr. Court- 

 hope, in his Paradise <>/ Birds, puts into the 

 nightingale's mouth, that a bird is better than a 

 man, for 



" He never will mount as the swallows, 



Who dashed round his steeples to pair. 

 Or hawked the bright flies in the hollows 

 Of delicate air." 



And, long before this, Banquo had marked their 

 " pendent beds " on Macbeth's castle, and noticed 

 that 



" Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed 

 The air is delicate." 



And who does not recall Tennyson's 



" Swallow, swallow, flying, flying south," 



and bearing on swift wing the message that 



" Dark and true and tender is the north "? 



Or who, that has once read it, can forget Les 

 Hirondelles of Beranger, and how the French 

 captive among the Moors questions the swallows 

 about his country, his home, his friends, which 

 they perhaps have seen ? 



Lastly, what a felicitous line is this of the 

 American poet Lowell, when he describes 



" The thin-winged swallow skating on. the air." 



