EAGLES AND ART. 
255 
bird when in perfect repose emits a series of sounds resem- 
bling considerably those produced by musical glasses under 
the finger — it is strange to find this trait in the harsh family of 
Raptorese — ^but it is not the less consistent with the unity in 
apparent discord prevailing throughout Nature. These savage 
despots of the air have all a harmony of their own ! 
Aye, in his solitary wandering the Artist makes the discov- 
ery, that in the fitness of things the Eagle even may be consid- 
ered a musical bird. His estimate of harmonious sounds is 
comparative by necessity. When standing beside Niagara, 
or when amidst savage mountains he scales the slippery 
rocks that tremble to the sullen thunder-bass of cataracts, 
leaping down dark-mouthed, jagged-gorges ; then if he hear 
the Eagle shout its shrill war-cry from out the spray-mist, 
doth his heart leap up within him, for here those dissonant 
notes best harmonize the dissonance ! 
Here, too, one glimpse of its warrior form as it comes forth 
suddenly to view on steadied wings, cutting the span of the 
perpetual iris in one imperial gleaming sweep of arrowy 
flight, the Artist sees to be worth a life full of common 
sights ! — that the Old Mother has no grand show beyond this 
one ! The creature seems the embodied spirit of the place 
— a winged desolation, born amidst the angry roar of mighty 
forces, to spring forth glorious in fierce beauty from the mists 
of their collision. 
Of the stern wildness of all pathless soHtudes the Eagle is 
a part, and the Artist knows that in painting such scenes his 
highest and noblest effects are produced by its presence. 
Hence, apart from the necessity he has found for studying it 
as the antitype of grandeur in humanity, he must do so as 
the most perfect consummation of the wild sublime in land- 
scape — in the moods, humors and conditions presented by 
his mother. 
Now, therefore, has he at length learned of her to look 
upon the Eagle, not as the mere object of a technical curi- 
osity, as an ornithological specimen, to be measured, skinned, 
