326 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIKDS. 



swarthy mechanician, takes his place and the faded Trou- 

 badour lingers a ghostly shadow beneath Barbaric towers. 



The soul of the beautiful has triumphed over manacles of 

 rhyme, and the mere artifice of jingling lines, like the sounds 

 of the ancient armorer's hammer, become an echo of a dis- 

 used craft ! Our chivalry has found a new " Plate of Proof," 

 in a free thought that " speaketh wide," and is not afraid 

 of new " deeds of high emprize " in conquering elements to 

 chain them to the car of Truth. 



If it be poetical to have turned the wonders of Aladin's 

 Lamp into the realities of his every-day life, then is your 

 Yankee a poet of action more splendid than the Oriental's 

 gorgeous fancy a Sinbad of actual voyages on the un- 

 known seas of miracles, with the weird Science for his 

 helmsman ! 



As we Americans are then undoubtedly a " swift" people, 

 intellectually and physically, we therefore like the chimney 

 swallow. It is a headlong, rapid, rattling, sociable creature 

 a perfect Yankee in morals and manners. It is here and 

 there and everywhere before you have time to think it is 

 strictly utilitarian and always busy ; it is a bird of progress, 

 having no respect for idle though ancient usages, and hence 

 we uphold it in appropriating, without the ceremony of, by 

 your leave our unoccupied chimney-flues in preference to 

 the old hollow trees their ancestors lived in. 



This sort of sagacity goes to the heart of a Yankee 

 nothing can lie idle where he is ; if nobody else takes pos- 

 session and turns it to account, he feels it to be a moral duty 

 to do so himself industry with him covers a multitude of 

 sins. He absolutely protects and nourishes the swallow on 

 this account, though an intruder upon himself; but we 

 should not expect too much of Yankee nature, nor be sur- 

 prised if we should find him in emulation of the Chinese in- 

 troducing " bird's-nest soup " into general use at sixpence a 

 bowl ! The near communication with China, which the 

 California trade has opened, may lead to such a result at an 



