86 BIRDS AND MAN 



Sounds inharmonious in themselves, and harsh. 

 Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns. 

 And only there, please highly for their sake — 



words which I have suggested misled Ruskin, and 

 have certainly misled others — he, Cowper, knew 

 better. His real feeling, and better and wiser 

 thought, is expressed in one of his incomparable 

 letters (Hayley, vol. ii. p. 230) — 



" My green-house is never so pleasant as when 

 we are just on the point of surrendering it ... I 

 sit with all the windows and the door wide open, 

 and am regaled with the scent of every flower in 

 a garden as full of flowers as I have known how 

 to make it. We keep no bees, but if I lived in 

 a hive I could hardly have more of their music. 

 All the bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed 

 of mignonfette opposite to the window, and 

 pay me for the honey they get out of it by a 

 hum, which, though rather monotonous, is as 

 agreeable to my ears as the whistUng of my 

 linnets. All the sounds that nature utters are 

 delightful, at least in this country. I should not 

 perhaps find the roaring of lions in Africa, or of 

 bears in Russia, very pleasing ; but I know no 

 beast in England whose voice I do not account 



