THE LIFE OF BIRDS 153 
music to which it is the overture belongs to 
other spheres. It might be the Azgelus of 
some lost convent. It might be the meditation 
of some maiden hermit, saying over to herself 
in solitude, with recurrent tuneful pauses, the 
only song she knows. Beside this soliloquy of 
seraphs, the carol of the Veery seems a familiar 
and almost domestic thing; yet it is so charm- 
ing that Aububon must have designed to in- 
clude this among the Thrushes whose merits he 
proclaims, 
But the range of musical perfection is a wide 
one; and if the standard of excellence be that 
wondrous brilliancy and variety of execution 
suggested by the Mockingbird, then the palm 
belongs, among our New England songsters, 
to the Red Thrush, otherwise called the Mavis 
or Brown Thrasher. I know not how to de- 
scribe the voluble and fantastic notes which fall 
like pearls and diamonds from the beak of our 
Mavis, while his stately attitudes and high-born 
bearing are in full harmony with the song. I 
recall the steep, bare hillside, and the two great 
boulders which guard the lonely grove, where 
I first fully learned the wonder of this lay, as 
if I had met St. Cecilia there. A thoroughly 
happy song, overflowing with life, it gives even 
its most familiar phrases an air of gracious con- 
descension, as when some great violinist stoops 
