THE EAGLE AND THE CANARY. 141 
fabulous sparrow, what I have been thinking about 
and have written. " How would you like it," I 
hear him saying, " O wise man, that knows so 
much about the ways of birds, if you were shut up 
in a big cage — in Windsor Castle, let us say — with 
scores of menials to wait on you and anticipate 
your every want ? That is, I must explain, every 
want compatible with — ahem ! — the captive con- 
dition. Would you be happy in your confine- 
ment, practising with the dumb-bells, riding up 
and down the floors on a bicycle, and gazing at 
pictures and filagree caskets and big malachite 
vases, and eating dinners of many, many courses ? 
Or would you begin to wish that you might be 
allowed to live on sixpence a day — and earn it ; 
and even envy the ragged tramp who dines on a 
handful of half-rotten apples and sleeps in a hay- 
stack, but is free to come and go, and range the 
world at will ? You have been playing at nature ; 
but Nature mocks you, for your captives thank 
you not. They would rather go to her without an 
intermediary, and take a scantier measure of food 
from her hand, but flavoured as she only can 
flavour it. Widen your cage, naturalist ; replace 
the little twinkling lustres with sun and moon and 
milky way ; plant forests on the floor, and let 
there be hills and valleys, rivers and wide spaces ; 
and let the blue pillars of heaven be the wires of 
