68 THE STUDY OF NATURE. 
in the smallest. With the small birds, unostentatious as they are, 
modestly and seriously clad, art begins, and, on certain points, 
rises higher than the sphere of man. Far from equalling the 
nightingale, we have been unable to express or to render an account 
of his sublime song. 
The eagle, then, is in these pages dethroned; the nightingale 
reions in his stead. In that moral crescendo, where the bird con- 
_tinuously advances in self-culture, the apex and the supreme point 
are naturally discovered, not in brutal strength, so easily overpassed 
by man, but in a puissance of art, of soul, and of aspiration which 
man has not attained, and which, beyond this world, transports 
him in a moment to the further spheres. 
High justice and true, because it is clear-visioned and tender! 
Feeble on too many points, I doubt not, this book is strong in 
tenderness and faith. It is one, constant and faithful, Nothing 
makes it divaricate. Above death and its false divorce, through life 
and the masks which disguise its unity, it flies, it loves to hover, from 
nest to nest, from egg to egg, from love to the love of God. 
La Ukve, near Havre, September 21, 1855. 
= NM i ee 7S 
sete SE) 
Co al PY Meee pore rnd Te 
