132 
BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
countenance, deep bass voice, and grand mouth- 
filling polysyllables suiting his subject well, and 
making his description seem to our minds a sombre 
magnificent picture never to be forgotten — at all 
events, never by an ornithologist. 
Doubtless this part of his discourse proved 
eminently pleasing to the majority of his hearers, 
who, looking downwards into the depths of their 
own natures, would be able to discern there a 
glimmer, or possibly more than a glimmer, of that 
divine quality he had spoken of, and which was, 
unhappily for them, not recognized by the world at 
large ; so that, for the moment, he was addressing 
a congregation of captive eagles, all mentally rufiling 
their plumage, and flapping their pinions, and 
uttering indignant screams of protest against the 
injustice of their lot. 
The illustration pleased me for a difl*erent reason, 
namely, because, being a student of bird-life, his 
contrasted picture of the two widely difierent kinds, 
when deprived of liberty, struck me as being 
singularly true to nature, and certainly it could not 
have been more forcibly and picturesquely put. 
For it is unquestionably the fact that the misery 
we inflict by tyrannously using the power we 
possess over God's creatures, is great in proportion 
to the violence of the changes of condition to which 
we subject our prisoners; and while canary and 
