which it resembles in form — being, in fact, one of that family. 

 Thus, the most admired of all singers — the subject of poets' 

 songs and eulogies, the bird that people walk far and wide to 

 listen to, of which they talk for weeks before it comes, noting 

 down the day of its arrival as if it were the Queen or the Queen's 

 son — is yet nothing but a little insignificant brown bird, not to 

 be named with the parrot for plumage, nor with our little gold- 

 finch, who always looks as if he had his Sunday suit on. But 

 this is a good lesson for us. The little brown nightingale, with 

 his little brown wife in the thickety copse, with their simple un- 

 pretending nest, not built up aloft on the tree branch, but 

 humbly at the tree's root, or even on the very ground itself, 

 may teach us that the world's external show or costliness is 

 not true greatness. The world's best bird-singer might have 

 been as big as an eagle, attired in colours of blue and scarlet 

 and orange like the grandest macaw. But the great Creator 

 willed that it should not be so — his strength, and his furious- 

 ness, and his cruel capacity were sufficient for the eagle, and his 

 shining vestments for the macaw ; whilst the bird to which was 

 given the divinest gift of song must be humble and unobtrusive, 

 small of size, with no surpassing beauty of plumage, and loving 

 best to hide itself in the thick seclusion of the copse in which 

 broods the little mother-bird, the very counterpart of himself, 

 upon her olive-coloured eggs. 



Mr. Harrison Weir has given us a sweet little picture of the 

 nightingale at home. Somewhere, not far off, runs the high- 

 road, or it may be a pleasant woodland lane leading from one 

 village to another, and probably known as," Nightingale-lane," 

 and traversed night after night by rich and poor, learned and 



