SOUNDS FROM ANIMATE NATURE. 310 



emotions. We see without conscious observation and 

 hear without conscious attention, so that when we are 

 suddenly deprived of these sights and sounds we feel that 

 there is a blank in our enjoyments, which can be filled 

 only by those charming objects that never before received 

 our thought or attention. How many bright things have 

 faded on our mind, and how many sweet sounds have 

 died on the ear before we were hardly aware of their 

 existence ! 



If we hearken attentively to the miscellaneous sounds 

 that come to our ears from the outer world, we shall 

 perceive that some of them are cheerful and exhilarat- 

 ing, others are melancholy and depressing. Of the first 

 are chiefly the songs of birds, the noise of poultry, the 

 chirping of insects ; indeed, the greater part of the sounds 

 of animate nature. The second class comes chiefly from 

 inanimate things, as the whistling of winds, the murmur 

 of gentle gales, the roar of storms, the rush of falling 

 water, and the ebbing and flowing of tides. All these 

 are of a plaintive character, sometimes gloomy and sad, 

 at other times merely soothing and tranquillizing. They 

 all produce more or less of what physicians call a seda- 

 tive effect. These two classes of sounds are often insep- 

 arably blended, inasmuch as some of the voices of birds, 

 insects, and other creatures are melancholy, and some of 

 the sounds of winds and waters are cheerful. 



I shall treat of these different sounds chiefly as they 

 affect the mind and sensibility ; of the poetry rather than 

 the science of these phenomena. My object is to point out 

 one remarkable source of our agreeable sensations as de- 

 rived from nature, and to show in what manner we may 

 cause them to contribute to our pleasure. I am persuaded 

 that one important means of deriving pleasure from any 

 object is to direct our attention to it; and if this be not 

 an indulgence that is liable to increase to a vicious extent. 



