172 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



been lightly sketched ; may we fill in these outlines by taking 

 Christopher North and Charles Waterton, respectively, for the 

 concrete expression of the idea ? The one of these is emo- 

 tional, the other logical ; or (as perhaps it may be better stated), 

 the one was a bird lover, the other an ornithologist. Intolerably 

 prejudiced and egotistical was Waterton, and yet he is exact, 

 painstaking, and persevering. Wilson, on the other hand, with 

 a vast flow of animal spirits, and a fund of rhetoric which 

 hurries him on monte decurrens velut amnis^ grips your hand in 

 his own hearty grasp, lets you into his inmost thoughts, and 

 spirits you away with him on eagle's wings to the lonely moor 

 and the plunging surf off the Stack Rocks. There he will 

 pour out declamation by the hour on the falcon, and freeze the 

 blood with his delineation of the midnight murders of the 

 owl amongst that " feeble folk " the field-mice ; but no one can 

 suppose the while that he is listening to exact science. Hear 

 him enlarge on the raven : " The raven, it is thought, is in the 

 habit of living upwards of a hundred years, perhaps a couple of 

 centuries. Children grow into girls, girls into maidens, maidens 

 into wives, wives into widows, widows into old decrepit, crones, 

 and crones into dust ; and the raven who wons at the head of 

 the glen is aware of all the births, baptisms, marriages, death- 

 beds, and funerals. Certain it is at least men so say that he 

 is aware of the death-beds and the funerals. Often does he 

 flap his wings against door and window of hut, when the wretch 

 within is in extremity, or, sitting on the heather roof, croaks 

 horror into the dying dream. As the funeral winds its way to- 

 wards the mountain cemetery, he hovers aloft in the air, or, 

 swooping down nearer to the bier, precedes the corpse like a 

 sable saulie. While the party of friends are carousing in the 

 house of death, he too, scorning funeral baked-meats, croaks 

 hoarse hymns and dismal dirges as he is devouring the pet-lamb 

 of the little grandchild of the deceased. . . . Dying ravens hide 

 themselves from daylight in burial places among the rocks, and 



