MELLOW ENGLAND. 



167 



and is even more rapid and ringing, and is delivered 

 in nearly the same manner \ but our birds all stop 

 when the sky-lark has only just begun. Away he goes 

 on quivering wing, inflating his throat fuller and fuller, 

 mounting and mounting, and turning to all points of 

 the compass as if to embrace the whole landscape in 

 his song, the notes still raining upon you as distinct as 

 ever, after you have left him far behind. This strain 

 indeed suggests some rare pyrotechnic display, musical 

 sounds being substituted for the many-colored sparks 

 and lights. And yet I will add what perhaps the best 

 readers do not need to be told, that neither the lark 

 song, nor any other bird song in the open air and un- 

 der the sky, is as noticeable a feature as my description 

 of it might imply, or as the poets would have us be- 

 lieve ; and that most persons, not especially interested 

 in birds or their notes, and intent upon the general 

 beauty of the landscape, would probably pass it by un- 

 remarked. 



I suspect that it is a little higher flight than the facts 

 will bear out when the writers make the birds go out 

 of sight into the sky. I could easily follow them on 

 this occasion, though if I took my eye away for a mo- 

 ment it was very difficult to get it back again. I had 

 to search for them as the astronomer searches for a 

 star. It may be that in the spring, when the atmos- 

 phere is less clear, and the heart of the bird full of a 

 more mad and reckless love, that the climax is not 

 reached until the eye loses sight of the singer. 



