88 
POPULAR HISTORY OF BIRDS. 
about his travels ; such as^ Whether he compared the dark 
sea^ streaked with deepest purple^ with our lake? marble 
pillars of ruined temples on green hill-sides^ with gables and 
porches of old Berkshire farms ? or dim islands — -Cos and 
Ithaca — glimmering through a cloud-curtain of silver, with 
our country towns, just visible in the early dawn ? Perhaps 
he preferred a town in Egypt, long a favourite winter-home 
of his kindred. What food for those ^bright, bright eyes/ 
in the land of sphinxes and mummies ! What a stare at the 
Pyramids, and longing lingering look at Rosetta ! Our 
Loddon — the tranquil and clear-flowing — is a pretty river ; 
but think of the Nile, sprinkled with spreading sails, and 
bordered by gardens ! 
"Pleasant falls the shade from vast boughs of sycamore 
and fig-trees ! I can see him plunging into the twihght 
groves of date, citron, lime, and banana, and covering him- 
self over in gloom and fragrance. There truly he might sit 
^darkling."* What bowers of roses! But no; our wood 
challenges the world for roses ; and here Hafiz might have 
contented his own Bulbul. Surely that ^bright, bright 
eye ^ drank in with wonder the living figures of the land- 
scape ; and strangest of them all, the Arab in his long blue 
dress, at the door of the mosque of Abu-mandur. How 
