OUT OF DOORS WITH NATURE. 327 



early day : for with the influx of a rich commerce we may 

 look for these foreign luxuries. 



But with all Jonathan's material tendencies in the matter of 

 practical poetry and Epic deeds, he is nevertheless surrounded 

 in his daily walks by marvellous harmonies, the etherial tones 

 of which might 



" Wake a soul under the ribs of Death." 



As he has never been noted for a laggard, we give him the 

 credit of greeting many a resurrection of Daedal Earth with 



u The top o' the morn to ye !" 



as Day rolled grandly forth from its deep lair of Darkness ; 

 and then how, in spring-time, axled on harmonies, its sono- 

 rous wheels climbed the low mists, melting them in seeming 

 snow-flakes, in rose-tints, and in music ! Ah, then it is that 

 hard-fisted Jonathan knows that he is something more than 

 a machine maker that, though he invents, he too had been 

 invented first ; and his rough heart melts his brown and 

 parchment-wrinkled face, grows glistening down its seams 

 like "dew besprent" sides of gray old granite gorges Avhich 

 sudden summer storms have cut in sharp narrow tracks, as 

 they were hurled adown from some element-defying mountain 

 front ! He hears the morning song of birds, and all his child- 

 hood is brought back to him for tough, hard, and indestruc- 

 tible as his present nature seems, it is not the less true that this 

 caoutchouc being was once tender as the first fresh-blown 

 flower of spring, when the earliest morning bird waked with 

 it in soft, low, garrulous prattling to the coming sun. 



He recognizes, one by one, the fellows of that blissful time. 

 First struggling out from the deep hush of dim and distant 

 woods, he hears the mellow, liquid strain of that sweet- voiced 

 Evangel of the solitude the freckled Song Thrush. Then, 

 nearer at hand, the little "Wren shrills its piping treble aye, 

 it may be from the very chimney-top itself while now, some 



