THE SWALLOWS. 79 



POIET. I delight in this living landscape! 

 The swallow is one of my favourite birds, 

 and a rival of the nightingale ; for he glads 

 my sense of seeing as much as the other 

 does my sense of hearing. He is the joyous 

 prophet of the year the harbinger of the 

 best season: he lives a life of enjoyment 

 amongst the loveliest forms of nature : win- 

 ter is unknown to him; and he leaves the 

 green meadows of England in autumn, for 

 the myrtle and orange groves of Italy, and 

 for the palms of Africa: he has always 

 objects of pursuit, and his success is secure. 

 Even the beings selected for his prey are 

 poetical, beautiful, and transient. The 

 ephemerae are saved by his means from a 

 slow and lingering death in the evening, and 

 killed in a moment, when they have known 

 nothing of life but pleasure. He is the 

 constant destroyer of insects, the friend of 

 man ; and with the stork and the ibis, may 

 be regarded as a sacred bird. His in- 

 stinct, which gives him his appointed sea- 

 sons, and which teaches him always when 



