CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



the shepherds on clifF or beneath cloud; but their off- 

 spring are rarely allowed to get full-fledged in spite 

 of the rifle always lying loaded in the shieling. But in 

 the days of our boyhood there were many glorious 

 things on earth and air that now no more seem to 

 exist, and among these were the Eagles. One pair had 

 from time immemorial built on the Echo-cliff, and 

 you could see with a telescope the eyry, with the rim 

 of its circumference, six feet in diameter, strewn with 

 partridges, moorfowl, and leverets — their feathers and 

 their skeletons. But the Echo-cliff was inaccessible. 



''Hither the rahihoiv comes, the cloud, 

 And mists that spi'ead thejti/ing shroud. 

 And simheams, and the flying blast. 

 That if it coidd, zcoidd hurry past. 

 But that enormous hai'rier hinds itjctst^ 



No human eye ever saw the birds within a thousand 

 feet of the lower earth; yet how often must they have 

 stooped down on lamb and leveret, and struck the 

 cushat in her very yew-tree in the centre of the wood ! 

 Perhaps they preyed at midnight, by the light of the 

 waning moon — at mid-day, in the night of sun-hid- 

 ing tempests — or afar off, in even more solitary wilds, 

 carried thither on the whirlwind of their own wings, 

 they swept off their prey from uninhabited isles, 



''Placed far amid the melancholy main^'' 



[ 112] 



