176 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



suiting his subject well and making his description 

 seem to our minds a sombre, magnificent picture 

 never to be forgotten — ^at all events never by an 

 ornithologist. 



Doubtless this part of his discourse proved 

 eminently pleasing to the majority of his hearers, 

 who, looking downwards into the depths of their 

 own natures, would be able to discern there a glim- 

 mer, or possibly more than a glimmer, of that divine 

 quality he had spoken of, and which was, unhappily 

 for them, not recognized by the world at large ; so 

 that for the moment he was addressing a congre- 

 gation of captive eagles, all mentally ruffling their 

 plumage and flapping their pinions and uttering 

 indignant screams of protest against the injustice 

 of their lot. 



The illustration pleased me for a different reason; 

 namely, because, being a student of bird-life, his 

 contrasted picture of the two widely different kinds, 

 when deprived of liberty, struck me as being singu- 

 larly true to nature, and certainly it could not have 

 been more forcibly and picturesquely put. For it 

 is unquestionably the fact that the misery we inflict 

 by tyrannously using the power we possess over 

 God's creatures, is great in proportion to the violence 

 of the changes of condition to which we subject our 

 prisoners ; and while canary and eagle are both 

 more or less aerial in their mode of life, and possessed 



