129 
ous and feeling recluse, who wanders among 
the tombs, hears this dull and plaintive voice ; 
he believes it to come from the bosom of the 
earth, from the charnel-house of the dead? 
the light fluttering of the bird of night startles 
him, and he fancies he hears the unblessed 
dead wandering near him over the ground 
that covers in vain their bones. He believes 
that they call him to his last asylum; the 
sterile pomp of grandeur and the transitory 
pleasures of life touch his heart no longer: 
he beholds only the coffin, and the dark ce- 
metery where repose in peace, and in inglo- 
rious confusion, the turbulent and haugh- 
ty monarch, the peaceful and unambitious 
shepherd." 
Such are the ideas that the timid vulgar 
have conceived, (and which have been hand- 
ed from generation to generation, and which 
the tales of the nursery have so instilled into 
the infant mind that even the present en- 
lightened age is not exempt from their effects,) 
and which renders ominous the bird of night. 
Yet far from being injurious, these birds wage 
war with those species of minute and destruc- 
tive animals that undermine our dwellings, 
R 
