Minstrels of the Winter. . 21 



his own race, and, like the robin, leads a lonely life, knowing no 

 fellowsnip except witli Ms mate wliile love rules him, and to 

 her showing an attachment as ardent as his hostility to all else 

 is unscrupulous and savage. But he is a " noble savage," and 

 when fairly in song, which does not happen till the new year 

 turns, rejoices to peal out his loud, wild, and mournful notes 

 when every other bird is silenced by the keenness of the wintry 

 blast. 



Occasionally in the vicinity of villages, and in well-wooded 

 gardens, the winter days are enlivened by the notes of the 

 woodlark, the wren, the gold-crowned wren, the robin, and 

 sm^ll companies of wandering finches. But the extent to 

 which these become musical, indeed the degree in which they 

 visit the abodes of men, depends much upon the weather, and 

 there are times when during frost, fog, and snow, no birds 

 capable of a musical note save the sparrow and the robin are 

 ever seen. Where they hide at such inclement seasons no man 

 can tell, but that many of them perish in hard winters is but too 

 well known by the finding of their dead bodies sometimes in 

 dozens and scores, sometimes in hundreds, in sheltered nooks 

 to which they had resorted for mutual protection, and to perish 

 of want in a community of misery. Even when no such terrors 

 threaten them, the dull weather so common to December makes 

 them all mute, and it is only on those halcyon days when the 

 sun breaks through the gloom, and makes a momentary spring- 

 time, that we are reminded by their music that the world is still 

 peopled with happy feathered creatures. Song birds are not 

 such victims of blind unmeaning impulse, not such mere crea- 

 tures of instinct as to sing, as Tennyson says, ' ' because they 

 must." They participate with us in the depression consequent 

 on gloom, and the cheerfulness that accompanies life and light; 

 and it is because during December the world is more dead in 

 the aspects of the sky and the state of vegetation than at all 

 other seasons, that then nature is most silent, in a certain sense 

 the grave has closed over all things lovely, and the birdies are 

 buried with the flowers. It is not lack of food, but lack of 

 sunshine that causes the general silence of December ; fog is 

 more depressing than frost, and the minstrels that are still 

 capable of song take their moods from the state of the elements, 

 and are simply silent when it would be out of taste to sing. It 

 is worthy of notice in this connection that we celebrate the 

 most joyous festival of the whole year at a time when the aspect 

 of heaven and earth are most depressing, the origin of Christmas 

 lying far back and beyond the blessed history of which it is now 

 the brightest outward symbol, and in some sense but a con- 

 tinuation in an altered form of those Pagan feasts in which the 

 holly, mistletoe, and ivy were originally consecrated as emblema 



