14 love's meinie. 



can see the pretty blue shield on its breast, perhaps, 

 at this distance. Vain shield, if ever the fair little 

 thing is wretched enough to set foot on English 

 ground ! I find the last that was seen was shot 

 at Margate so long ago as 1842, — and there seems 

 to be no official record of any visit before that, 

 since Mr. Thomas Embledon shot one on Newcastle 

 town moor in 18 16. But this rarity of visit to us 

 is strange ; other birds have no such clear objection 

 to being shot, and really seem to come to England 

 expressly for the purpose. And yet this blue-bird — 

 (one can't say " blue robin " — I think w^e shall have 

 to call him " bluet," like the cornflower) — stays 

 in Sweden, where it sings so sweetly that it is 

 called " a hundred tongues." 



II. That, then, is the utmost which the lords of 

 land, and masters of science, do for us in their watch 

 upon our feathered suppliants. One kills them, 

 the other writes classifying epitaphs. 



We have next to ask what the poets, painters, 

 and monks have done. 



The poets — among whom I affectionately and 

 reverently class the sweet singers of the nursery, 

 mothers and nurses — have done much ; very nearly 

 all that I care for your thinking of. The painters 

 and monks, the one being so greatly under the 

 influence of the other, we may for the present class 



