236 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
cloak and long hair streaming beyond, made Ms figure seem 
the very counterpart of a blasted tree in the foreground, the 
only green limb upon which seemed to have just been partly 
torn from the trunk, and streamed, too, on the savage blast. 
I shall never forget that picture of desolation ! 
The other was a noble picture — pronounced by Christo- 
pher North, the noblest of all executed by Audubon^ — of a 
Golden Eagle, the full size of life, which, from a lofty crag 
of the White Mountains, was in the act of carrying off a 
lamb upon which it had just pounced, and which was clearly 
a vagrant from the white flock browsing peacefully beneath, 
which could be dimly seen through a break in the whirling 
chaos of vapor, which nearly compassed about the sun-lit 
rock, upon the grassy edges of which it had been tempted to 
feed. 
With all this simplicity of elements, there was something 
indescribably majestic in the picture. In addition to the 
general effect, there was a degree of microscopic detail in 
the finish of the two figures of the eagle and the lamb, which 
has ever since left upon my mind an impression as of an ac- 
tual scene. 
Alas ! for white-wooled innocence ! it pleads in vain for 
mercy with the merciless. The full-winged tyrant is an 
hungered and athirst, and hath no bowels of compassion now 
that can be moved by piteous bleatings. 
It is very nice, poor lamb ! to have a snowy fleece, and 
such large, bright, gentle eyes, with such a meek appeal in 
them as might soften a heart of veriest adamant — very nice 
indeed ! and one would think that of all creatures, it was 
least possible that thou couldst come to harm, even in a sin- 
ful world like this of ours ! 
But sad enough, these have all been in vain ! A single 
crime has rendered the JEgis of purity powerless for thee, 
and forced thee to realize that, indeed, 
" Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt !" — 
