20 LOVES MEINIE. 



Life of Charles Dickens, how fond he was of 

 taking long walks in the night and alone ? 

 The robin, en voyage, is the Charles Dickens 

 of birds. He always travels in the night, and 

 alone ; rests, in the day, wherever day chances 

 to find him ; sings a little, and pretends he 

 hasn't been anywhere. He goes as far, in 

 the winter, as the north-west of Africa; and 

 in Lombardy, arrives from the south early 

 in March ; but does not stay long, going on 

 into the Alps, where he prefers wooded and 

 wild districts. So, at least, says my Lombard 

 informant. 



I do not find him named in the list of 

 Cretan birds ; but even if often seen, his 

 dim red breast was little likely to make much 

 impression on the Greeks, who knew the 

 flamingo, and had made it, under the name 

 of Phcenix or Phoenicopterus, the centre of 

 their myths of scarlet birds. They broadly 

 embraced the general aspect of the smaller 

 and more obscure species, under the term 

 ^ov6o<i, which, as I understand their use of 

 it, exactly implies the indescribable silky 

 brown, the groundwork of all other colour 

 in so many small birds, which is indistinct 



