THE SWAN'S GOOD QUALITIES. 
217 
not have borrowed all that it can and ought to borrow until it has 
invented for the action of its machinery a paddle operating like the 
webbed feet of the swan, so as to effect a forward movement, and, while 
expanding, secure a new starting-point. It would seem as if Provi- 
dence had always placed within reach of man the model or type of 
the marvellous processes which it wished the latter to discover and 
apply to the advancement of the human race. 
Borrowing from the same writer, we may speak of the swan as a 
model father. But he cannot be praised for his conjugal fidelity, which 
sometimes lasts only for a single season. The maternal tenderness of 
his mate is very admirable. Both father and mother carry their young 
on their back in their first infancy, and provide them with a warm and 
secure shelter under the elegant canopy of their wings. They never 
calculate either the number or the strength of the enemies which 
threaten the safety of their brood, but rush upon them with impetuous 
fury. With equal gallantry they attack man, the dog, the horse ; or 
await the eagle with heroic firmness, — her head raised, bill extended,— 
stunning it with a sudden blow, and driving it ignominiously from the 
reedy pool. She does not hide her nest, because always on the alert 
to defend it; and even the subtle fox, with all his passion for delicate 
food, dares not approach the well-guarded home of the cygnets. 
The males, however, contend not less furiously among themselves 
for the possession of the female. In the far Northern waters, the lakes 
of Iceland and Lapland, where numbers of wild swans live in uncon- 
trolled freedom, sanguinary encounters take place every spring. 
Referring once more to the bird's supposed musical gifts, we may 
fairly conclude that the Greeks originated the picture simply with the 
view of filling up the sum of perfection which they had attributed to 
her. A graceful form, courage, devotion, spotless purity, — what more 
was wanted than a tender melancholy voice, sweeter and more flute- 
like even than that of the nightingale ? The fiction may be excused, 
perhaps, on the ground that it sprang from the Greek love of perfection 
and the ideal. In order to render it plausible, or to mitigate it, the poets 
pretended that this wonderfully melodious voice, this "essence of all 
