38 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



with ourselves, and yet, who in their apparelling their modea 

 and humors, answer mere nature; and just as we love the 

 matron-smiling front of her eternal freshness, must we love 

 these, and continue to shed upon them out of our hearts, a 

 wide beneficence. 



How can we fail to love a keen-eyed wild-bird, coming 

 from the solitude, burnished and many-hued, as if the air, 

 where its surpassing beauty grew, held stores of gold, of 

 amethyst and glittering gems within its depths, and had 

 sifted them in gradual splendors down upon the plumy thing 

 that sat within its stillness ! What a pleasant mystery its 

 gay, eccentric being is ! How we delight to watch its tame- 

 less heart pulsing through every gesture, and to wonder what 

 it thinks and feels, and how its moods go ! 



"Who has not noted the joyful amazement lighting up an 

 infant's eye when you hold a bird before it, or a sleek-furred 

 squirrel just from its leaf-cradle. How it screams with the 

 novel joy as its shrinking fingers feel the strange, soft touch. 

 Its first impulse — the royal patron roused already ! — ^is to 

 fondle and caress the little prisoner, and, though the chubby, 

 awkward fist of the young Hercules may strangle his deli- 

 cate vassal at the first grasp, yet is it not from cruelty, but 

 from the eagerness of the new delight. 



All children are enthusiastic naturalists so long as the 

 happy time of innocent free impulse lasts, and well do I 

 remember all that mellow time with me ! Then was my faith 

 in the beautiful most mighty ; then gave it a charmed life to 

 me ; then was it my dintless shield, — the Sigil of my necro- 

 mance ;— by it did I " strange deeds upon the clouds," and 

 fairy fantasies of earth, and air, and sea, came in my dreams 

 obedient to its spell ; — it made to me a world of God's free 

 nature, wherein its creatures wore his glories for a garment, the 

 light of his own eternity in their clear eyes, and syllabled in 

 most sweet voices the language of his own harmonious tongue ! 

 I knew these for my twin-born brothers, for, with the com- 



