ciTAP. XXXI.] IDEAS ON BEAUTY. 223 



accomplished. I had obtained a specimen of the King 

 Bird of Paradise (Paradisea regia), which had been de- 

 scribed by Linnaeus from skms preserved in a mutilated 

 state by the natives. I knew how few Europeans had 

 ever beheld the perfect little organism I now gazed npon, 

 and how very imperfectly it was still known in Europe. 

 The emotions excited in the minds of a naturalist, who has 

 long desired to see the actual thing which he has hitherto 

 known only by description, drawing, or badly-preserved 

 external covering — especially when that thing is of sur- 

 passing rarity and beauty, require the poetic faculty fully 

 to express them. The remote island in which I found 

 myself situated, in an almost unvisited sea, far from the 

 tracks of merchant fleets and navies ; the wild luxuriant 

 tropical forest, which stretched far away on every side ; 

 the rude uncultured savages who gathered round me, — all 

 had their influence in determining the emotions with which 

 I gazed upon this " thing of beauty." I thought of the 

 long ages of the past, during which the successive gene- 

 rations of this little creature had run their course — year 

 by year being born, and living and dying amid these 

 dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze 

 upon their loveliness; to all appearance such a wanton 

 waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melan- 

 choly. It seems sad, that on the one hand such exquisite 

 creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their 



