340 THE CHAEM OF IDEALITY. [CHAP, tlii, 



it so injured the bird with its poisonous fangs, that 

 every feather fell off. When, therefore, the time for 

 migration was come, and the other Storks had already 

 flown away, these parents, with their children that had 

 been rescued, remained, in order to give proof of their 

 gratitude, till the plumage of their preserver was re- 

 newed, when they all departed together. 



And so the Stork has been idealized, and been made 

 to embody virtues which are found more scantily than 

 could be wished amongst our own race; just as the 

 Redbreast is said to have in pity strewn sheltering 

 leaves over the bodies of the babes whom man's cruelty 

 had murdered. From actual infirmity we love to flee 

 in thought to ideal perfectness, and that with our own 

 kind, as well as with the birds and beasts of fable. 

 In our respectful or affectionate remembrance of the 

 dead, we recall to mind not so much the character 

 which actually did exist, as the perfected image of that 

 which might have existed, had the failings and infirmi- 

 ties of human nature permitted; our thoughts delight 

 to dwell rather upon the heavenly than the earthly 

 vision of our departed friends ; and as the artist, in his 

 material representation of them, subdues all bodily 

 faults and adds angelic wings, so our mental picture of 

 the companions whom we have lost, obliterates each 

 weakness, and enhances each moral beauty, till we can 

 almost realize to our mind's eye the blessed and purified 

 spirits whom we hope to meet in a happier existence, 

 after we also shall have thrown off our heavy and cum- 

 bersome garment of clay. Now, let us put the fact in 

 this way. The absent and the estranged are dead to 

 us, either corporeally or spiritually. Can we not bring 

 ourselves to regard them with an equal love, tenderness, 



