24 The Minstrels of the Summer. 



day, the feathered choristers seem animated by a passion of 

 emulation, and pour forth such an exuberance of wild music, 

 that is almost more than a sensitive mind can bear. Such a 

 day was Tuesday, the 29th of April, when the gardens of Stoke 

 Newington seemed to be peopled with all the songsters of the 

 world, engaged in an international contest. Others, beside 

 myself, observed it ; it was a subject of conversation for 

 days after. Amongst the number then noticeable was a 

 thrush, who had a nest hard by in a thicket, and who, since 

 early in February, had made the welkin ring from the dawn of 

 day till long after evening twilight. That same evening one 

 of my neighbours — hating the noise, I suppose — fired a gun, 

 and that particular thrush has not been heard since. Whether 

 he killed the thrush I cannot say, he is perhaps happy that he 

 silenced it. JReqidescat in pace, with no ghost of a thrush to 

 warble reproaches on his grave. 



Cowper has the credit of first honouring in verse the fre- 

 quency of the nightingale's song by day. But Eapin had 

 already noticed the fact — 



" Omnes implevit ramos 

 Noctes atque dies." — Hort. lib. ii. 



And Shakspere has actually misrepresented the case — 



" The nightingale, if she would sing by day, 

 When every goose is cackling, would be thought 

 ~No better a musician than a swan." — Merchant of Venice, act 1, sc. t. 



The song, day or night, is doubtless the most delicious music 

 that ever saluted mortal ears since the day when the angels 

 sang " Glory to God in the Highest." Milton was the first to 

 make it the music of Eden, where Eve relates her dream to 

 Adam, and when we hear it now, we may all say — 



" Music of Paradise ! which still is heard 

 When the heart listens." 



Tennyson has caught at the same idea in In Memoriam, in 

 the invocation to the nightingale — 



" Wild bird, whose warble liquid sweet, 

 Kings Eden through the budded quicks." 



Keats' s ode is as rich and tender as the fullest gush of this 

 rare warbler's notes, and it has the truth of all his rustic images 

 and scenes, especially where he describes it — 



" In some melodious plot 

 Of beechen green and shadows numberless ;" 



for strange to say, if there be a beech within range of the 

 bird's haunts, he will choose that for his retreat, and at the 

 present moment a pair have nested in a beech within sight of 

 my study window. I would help to hang a bird-catcher, ama- 



