THE NIGHTINGALE. 
89 
different from our parish-clerk shutting the church-windows 
in the evening ! One is curious to know what a nightingale^ 
on his first tour,, would think of his own feathered brethren 
and the quadruped race^ — of that rare fellow the pelican^ 
with his six-men-power appetite; and the buffalo, his black 
nose snorting the Nile into foam as he crosses from side to 
side. But the sweet musician who sits on his branch re- 
joicing, quite heedless of me or my speculations, may have 
taken a different road. If he had visited the Archipelago 
and Egypt in former years, did he turn his wings to Syria ? 
Again I sigh for the bird-language. Touching stories that 
tongue might tell of the field which the Lord hath blessed 
with the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty 
of corn and wine ; of the woody tops of Carmel ; the sunny 
vineyard, and grassy upland ; the damask rose ; the stately 
palm of the Jordan; the silver sands of Gennesaret, and 
the sweet flowers 
' That o'er her western slope breathe airs of balm 
the hum of bees in clefts of the rocks ; the solemn olive- 
garden ; the lonely wayside ! For, think of the reach of 
that large dark eye ! A French naturalist has calculated 
the sight of birds to be nine times more powerful than that 
of man. Belzoni himself would have been nearly blind by 
