A FLIGHT OF QUAILS. 



/ 



patient of wing, they will surmount the 

 Apennines and overtop the Alps in a single 

 night ; leave Milan in its plain and Lucerne 

 by its lake when the afterglow lights up the 

 snow on the Jungfrau ; speed unseen in the 

 twilight over Burgundy or the Rhineland ; 

 cross the English Channel in the first grey 

 dawn ; and sup off fat slugs before twelve 

 hours are past, when the shadows grow deep 

 in the lanes of Surrey. Watt and Stephen- 

 son have enabled us poor crawling men to 

 do with pain and discomfort, at great ex- 

 pense, in the chamber of torture described 

 with grim humour as a train de luxe, what 

 these merry brown birds, the least of the 

 partridge tribe, can effect on their own stout 

 wings in rather less time, without turning 

 a feather. If you watch them at the end 

 of their short European tour from Rome 

 to England at a burst, you will find them 

 as playful and as bickering at its close as 

 if they had just gone out for an evening 

 constitutional. 



53 



