BY WAY OF APPENDIX. 
193 
the universe for permitting such things. We also 
recall the pitiable spectacle of a Pierre Loti going 
about the world with a pocket-handkerchief to his 
eyes, sobbing at the thought of the sad destiny in 
store for all the lower animals he encountered in 
his wanderings. Let us have no Booh of Pity 
and Death on our list, no mawkish weepings and 
ravings of disordered minds, however beautiful the 
writing may be. Let us rather make haste to burn 
all such literature so as to escape infection; and 
always bear in mind that the children of life are 
the children of joy, that the lower animals are only 
unhappy when made so by man ; that man alone, 
of all the creatures, has ''found out many in- 
ventions," the chief of which appears to be the 
art of making himself miserable, and of seeing 
all nature stained with that dark and hateful 
colour. 
The Paradise of Birds is not a prose book, 
like all the others I have mentioned, but a poem — 
only Sb poem, as some may say — and a very wild, 
fantastical one at that, relating the adventures of a 
couple of moonstruck enthusiasts — Windbag the 
poet, and Maresnest the scientist — who journey 
to the North Pole to seek for the last refuge of the 
birds, exterminated by man on all other portions of 
the globe. Their object in going thither is to 
o 
