76 THE BIRDS OF SHERWOOD FOREST. 



With skirmish and capricious passagings, 



And murmurs musical, and swift jug, jug, 



And one low piping sound more sweet than all, 



Stirring the air with such a harmony, 



That should j^ou close your eyes you might almost 



Forget it was not day." 



There is nothing sad or sorrowful in its sweet tones ; 

 but in perfect harmony with the quietude of a summer's 

 evening, when all the toil and bustle of the day is 

 hushed, it breathes a sense of calm and peaceful happi- 

 ness. 



Much, no doubt, as Coleridge has so well expressed 

 in the lines I have quoted above, must be allowed for 

 the state of the listener's feelings. Where the mind of 

 such a one is filled with sorrow or care, he would very 

 naturally invest the song with a plaintive, or even a 

 melancholy character ; but, with a mind at rest, and 

 filled with thoughts of Him whose power and goodness 

 have so greatly contributed to our earthly enjoyment, 

 surely it speaks of nothing but thankful gladness a 

 tribute of praise to the great Creator. 



The conjecture above expressed is illustrated by an 

 interesting incident related by the Duke de Cabellino, 

 one of the noble band of Neapolitan patriots who, in 

 1859, sought a refuge on our shores from the cruel 

 tyranny of the Bourbons. In a letter he wrote on land- 

 ing in Ireland to the Cork Daily Reporter, giving an 

 account of the sufferings which he and Baron Poerio and 

 others endured in the stifling prison cells of Monte 

 Fiesco, he says : 



"A nightingale, as if on a mission from Nature, ap- 

 parently feeling for our sorrows and solicitude, used to 

 come to the boughs of a mulberry-tree, and with his 

 plaintive song he expressed our griefs, so that he became 



