326 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIEDS. 
swarthy mechanician takes his place — and the faded Trou- 
badonr lingers a ghostly shadow beneath Barbaric towers. 
The soul of the beautiful has triumphed over manacles of 
rhyme, and the mere artifice of jingling lines, like the sounds 
of the ancient armorer's hammer, become an echo of a dis- 
used craft ! Our chivalry has found a new " Plate of Proof," 
in a free thought that " speaketh wide," and is not afraid 
of new " deeds of high emprize" in conquering elements to 
chain them to the car of Truth. 
If it be poetical to have turned the wonders of Aladin's 
Lamp into the realities of his every-day life, then is your 
Yankee a poet of action more splendid than the Oriental's 
gorgeous fancy — a Sinbad of actual voyages on the un- 
known seas of miracles, with the weird Science for his 
helmsman ! 
As we Americans are then undoubtedly a " swift" people, 
intellectually and physically, we therefore like the chimney 
swallow. It is a headlong, rapid, rattling, sociable creature 
■ — a perfect Yankee in morals and manners. It is here and 
there and everywhere before you have time to think — it is 
strictly utilitarian and always busy ; it is a bird of progress, 
having no respect for idle though ancient usages, and hence 
we uphold it in appropriating, without the ceremony of, by 
your leave — our unoccupied chimney-flues in preference to 
the old hollow trees their ancestors lived in. 
This sort of sagacity goes to the heart of a Yankee — 
nothing can lie idle where he is ; if nobody else takes pos- 
session and turns it to account, he feels it to be a moral duty 
to do so himself — industry with him covers a multitude of 
sins. He absolutely protects and nourishes the swallow on 
this account, though an intruder upon himself ; but we 
should not expect too much of Yankee nature, nor be sur- 
prised if we should find him in emulation of the Chinese in- 
troducing " bird's-nest soup " into general use at sixpence a 
bowl ! The near communication with China, which the 
California trade has opened, may lead to such a result at an 
