80 THE RAVEN 



what the fox is among animals, the most adroit, 

 the most knowing, the most ubiquitous, the most 

 unscrupulous among them all. In Pilpay as in 

 AZsop, in Babrius as in Phaedrus, in La Fontaine and 

 L' Estrange as in Gay, he serves to point many a 

 moral and adorn many a tale. 



A bird whose literary history begins with Cain, 

 with Noah, and with Elijah, and who gave his name 

 to the Midianite chieftain Oreb ; whose every action 

 and cry was observed and noted down, alike by 

 the descendants of Romulus and the ancestors of 

 Rolf the Ganger ; who occurs in every second play 

 of Shakespeare ; who forms the subject of the most 

 eery poem of Edgar Allan Poe, and enlivens the 

 pages of the Roderick Random of Smollett, of the 

 Rookwood of Ainsworth, of the Barnaby Rudge of 

 Dickens, is a bird whose historical and literary pre- 

 eminence is unapproached ; while, to the mind of 

 the patriotic English naturalist, he carries with him 

 also something of the pathetic interest which always 

 attaches to a lost or losing cause, to a state of 

 things, to a phase of thought or feeling, to a people 

 or to an individual, whether man or beast, who is 

 slowly passing away. The raven is passing away ; 

 not yet, I am glad to say, from the world at large 

 he is much too widespread and much too wide 



