London to John O' Groats. 31 



without loss or change of a single note of this morning's 

 song, to the Roman legions as they marched, or made 

 roads in Britain. It sang the same voluntaries to the 

 Saxons, Danes, and Normans, through the long ages, 

 and, perhaps, tended to soften their antagonisms, and 

 hasten their blending into one great and mighty people. 

 How the name and song of this happiest of earthly 

 birds run through all the rhyme and romance of Eng- 

 lish poetry, of English rural life, ever since there was 

 an England ! Take away its history and its song from 

 her daisy-eyed meadows and shaded lanes, and hedges 

 breathing and blooming with sweetbriar leaves and 

 hawthorn flowers from her thatched cottages, veiled 

 with ivy from the morning tread of the reapers, and 

 the mower's lunch of bread and cheese under the mea- 

 dow elm, and you take away a living and beautiful 

 spirit more charming than music. You take away from 

 English poetry one of its pleiades, and bereave it of a 

 companionship more intimate than that of the nearest 

 neighbourhood of the stars above. How the lark's life 

 and song blend, in the rhyme of the poet, with "the 

 sheen of silver fountains leaping to the sea," with 

 morning sunbeams and noontide thoughts, with the 

 sweetest breathing flowers, and softest breezes, and 

 busiest bees, and greenest leaves, and happiest human 

 industries, loves, hopes, and aspirations ! 



