188 
BllAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
the spot, the more hoarse and dissonant the voices of the 
creatures. Everywhere the dear birds hover and flit on 
hasty wing; but only near the dwelling of man hover 
those whose song is sweetest: in his garden they take 
shelter and bring up their young; in the close copse or 
mossy orchard they cower from the noonday heat; and 
return again and again, in spite of the persecutions they 
meet with at his hands, to heighten his enjoyments, to 
cheer his social hours, and renew the sentiments of past 
delight. In the lonely mere, and over the dark moor¬ 
land hover many birds, but they are such as only hoot 
and scream; and where the wild waves play together fly 
seabirds, whose only language is a dismal scream. 
Nature pushes up towards the region of poetry in 
sound as she does in colour. As she weaves rainbows 
from the fragments of a falling cloud, so she struggles 
to weave music from every voice of animate and inanimate 
things. The wind howls in the November branches, but 
sings amid the shrubby foliage of June; the rivulet 
makes a whizzing sound while creeping through the 
matted sedge, but laughs like a merry maiden when it 
sparkles among the yellow pebbles, and tinkles like a bell 
when it beats up a fallen rock. 
It is because music stands above all the utilities of 
sound,—because it appeals to the sentiments of men, 
because it is soul claiming kindred with soul, that man 
has loved it first among the spiritual possessions of the 
world, and has sought in its voice an answer to his 
longings for the good and fair. Nowhere upon the face 
of all the world is to be found a people in whose hearts 
music has not a welcome. The rude Indian stands upon 
