194 ‘ MIGRATIONS, 
of our house is, that she has taken possession not only of our house, 
but of our heart. 
In the rural mansion where my father-in-law educated his children, 
he would hold his class during summer in a greenhouse in which 
the swallows rested without disturbing themselves about the movements 
of the family, quite unconstrained in their behaviour, wholly occupied 
with their brood, passing out at the windows and returning through 
the roof, chattering very loudly with one another, and still more 
loudly when the master would make a pretence of saying, as St. 
Francis said, “ Sister swallows, can you not be silent?” 
Theirs is the hearth. Where the mother has built her nest, the 
daughter and the grand-daughter build. They return there every 
year; their generations succeed to it more regularly than do our own. 
A family dies out or is dispersed, the mansion passes into other 
hands; but the swallow constantly returns to it, and maintains its 
right of occupation. 
It is thus that our traveller has come to be accepted as a symbol 
of the permanency of home. She clings to it with such fidelity, that 
though the house may be repaired, or partially demolished, or long dis- 
turbed by masons, it is still retaken possession of, re-occupied by these 
faithful birds of persevering memory. 
She is the bird of return. And if I bestow this title upon her, 
it is not alone on account of her annual return, but on account of 
her general conduct, and the direction of her flight, so varied, yet 
nevertheless circular, and always returning upon itself. 
She incessantly wheels and veers, indefatigably hovers about the 
same area and the same locality, describing an infinity of graceful 
curves, which, however varied, are never far distant from one another. 
Is it to pursue her prey, the gnat which dances and floats in the air? 
Is it to exercise her power, her unwearying wing, without going too 
far from her nest? It matters not; this revolving flight, this inces- 
santly returning movement, has always attracted our eyes and heart, 
throwing us into a reverie, into a world of thought. 
We see her flight clearly, but never, or scarcely ever, her little 
