I. THE ROBIN. 3 5 



Hitherto, I liave been speaking only of 

 the Pilaments arranged for the strength and 

 continuiiy of the energetic pkime ; they are 

 "entirely different when they are set together 

 for d^'coration instead of force. After the 

 feather of the robin's wing, let us examine 

 one from his breast. 



33. I said, just now, he might be at once 

 outshone by a brickbat. Indeed, the day 

 before yesterday, sleeping at Lichfield, and 

 seeing, the first thing when I woke in the 

 morning, (for I never put down the blinds of 

 my bedroom windows,) the not uncommon 

 sight in an English country town of an en- 

 tire house-front of very neat, and very flat, 

 and very red bricks, with very exactly squared 

 square windows in it ; and not feeling my- 

 self in anywise gratified or improved by the 

 spectacle, I was thinking how in this, as in 

 all other good, the too much destroyed all. 

 The breadth of a robin's breast in brick-red 

 is delicious, but a whole house-front of brick- 

 red as vivid, is alarming. And yet one cannot 

 generalize even that trite moral with any safety 

 — for infinite breadth of green is delightful, how- 

 ever green ; and of sea or sky, hov/ever blue. 



