JN A GARDEN. 
Ill 
heavenly in his voice ; but now the wide circling 
wings that brought him for a few moments within 
hearing, have borne him beyond it again ; and 
missing it, the sunshine looks less brilliant than 
before, and all other bird- voices seem dull and of 
the earth. 
Certainly there is nothing spiritual in the song of 
the chaffinch. There he sits within sight, motionless, 
a little bird-shaped automaton, made to go off at 
intervals of twelve or thirteen seconds ; but un- 
fortunately one hears with the song the whirr and 
buzz of the internal machinery. It is not now as 
in April, when it is sufficient in a song that it shall 
be joyous ; in the leafy month, when roses are in 
bloom, one grows critical, and asks for sweetness 
and expression, and a better art than this vigorous 
garden singer displays in that little double flourish 
with which he concludes his monotonous lyric. 
He has practised that same flourish for five thousand 
years — to be quite within the mark — and it is still 
far from perfect, still little better than a kind of 
musical sneeze. So long is art ! 
Perhaps in some subtle way, beyond the 
psychologist's power to trace, he has become aware 
of my opinion of his performance — the unspoken 
detraction which yet efiects its object; and, feeling 
hurt in his fringilline amour propre, he has all at 
once taken himself off. Never mind ; a better 
