li THE LIGHT. 
eye quite as much as on the wing. Among species gifted with a keen 
and delicate vision, like the falcon, which from the loftiest heights of 
heaven can espy the worm in a thicket—like the swallow, which 
from a distance of one thousand feet can perceive a gnat—flight is 
sure, daring, and charming to look at in its infallible certainty. Far 
otherwise is it with the myopes, the short-sighted, as you may see 
by their gait; they fly with caution, grope about, and are afraid of 
falling. 
The eye and the wing—sight and flight—-that exalted degree 
of puissance which enables you incessantly to embrace in a glance, 
and to overleap, immense landscapes, vast countries, kingdoms—which 
permits you to see in complete detail, and not to contract, as in a 
geographical chart, so grand a variety of objects-—to possess and to 
discern, almost as if you were the equal of God;—-oh, what a source 
of boundless enjoyment! what a strange and mysterious happiness, 
scarcely conceivable by man ! 
Observe, too, these perceptions are so strong and so vivid that 
they grave themselves on the memory, and to such a degree that even 
an inferior animal like a pigeon retraces and recognizes every little 
accident in a road which he has only traversed once. How, then, 
will it be with the sage stork, the shrewd crow, the intelligent 
swallow ? 
Let us confess this superiority. Let us regard without envy those 
blisses of vision which may, perhaps, one day be ours in a happier 
existence. This felicity of seeing so much——of seeing so far—of 
seeing so clearly—of piercing the infinite with the eye and the 
wing, almost at the same moment,—to what does it belong? To that 
life which is our distant ideal. 1 life in the fulness of light, and 
without shadow ! 
Already the bird’s existence is, as it were, a foretaste of it. Tt 
would here prove to him a divine source of knowledge, if, in its 
sublime freedom, it were not burdened by the two fatalities which 
chain our globe to a condition of barbarism, and render futile all our 
aspirations. 
