EAGLES AND ART. 
261 
whicli characterize tlie Eagle-man. The sometime-fate of 
sucli a being — a Jupiter dethroned, or a Napoleon defeated 
— ^is therefore most aptly imaged : — 
" An Eagle so caught in some bursting cloud 
On Caucasus, his thunder-baffled wings 
Extended in the whirlwind, and his eyes 
Which gazed on the undazzling sun, now blinded 
By the white lightning, while the ponderous hail 
Beats on, his struggling, which sinks at length, 
Prone, and the aerial ice clings over it!" 
We can see, too, that its stately port makes it the fit em- 
blem of a feudal pride and isolation, which, like the bird, 
perched its huge eyries in castellated grandeur on the cliff- 
tops. There are full as many stories of wild and perilous 
daring growing out of the attempts to reach and rob the 
strong home of the bird, as of the baron. They were both 
themselves robbers, who scorned the lowlands which lay be- 
neath their searching gaze, and as often swooped down upon 
them in sudden foray. They have loved the bird rather from 
a feeling of the affinities between them, and have adopted it 
always as the emblem of rapacity and conquest, not of free- 
dom. 
It was for this reason Shelley hated the bird. He saw in 
it the analogue of evil triumphing over good, which crawls 
among the nations, changed by its immortal foe 
" ■ From starry shape beauteous and mild. 
To a dire snake with man and beast unreconciled!" 
But the contest between the two powers — " Twin Genii," — is 
renewed again after each defeat, and thus it is that 
" When the last hope of trampled France had failed," 
this prophet child of Art painted one of the most magnifi- 
cent pictures ever done on air in words, when he saw 
An Eagle and a Serpent wreathed in fight." 
