trees which the herons inhabit. Those coppice woods on the other shore stealing up to the heathery rocks, and sprinkled birches, are the haunts of the roe! That great glen, that stretches sullenly away into the distant darkness, has been for ages the birth and the death-place of the red deer. Hark, 'tis the cry of an eagle! There he hangs poised in the sunlight, and now he flies off towards the sea. -But again the song of our BLACKBIRD "rises like a steam of rich distilled perfumes," and our heart comes back to him upon the pinnacle of his own home-tree. The source of song is yet in the happy creature's heart— but the song itself has subsided, like a mountain-torrent that has been rejoicing in a sudden shower among the hills; the bird drops down among the balmy branches; and the other faint songs which that bold anthem had drowned, are heard at a distance, and seem to encroach every moment on the silence. You say you greatly prefer the song of the THRUSH. Pray, why set such delightful singers by the ears? We dislike the habit that very many people have of trying every thing by a scale. Nothing seems to them to be good-positively-only relatively. Now, it is true wisdom to be charmed with what is charming, to live in it, for the time being, and compare the emotion with no former edition whatever-unless it be unconsciously in the working of an imagination set a-going by delight. Who, in reading this magazine, for example, would compare or contrast it with any other periodical under heaven? You read it-and each article is felt to be admirable or execrablepurely for its own sake. You love or you hate it, as THE, not as a magazine. You hug it to your heart, or you make it spin to the other end of the room, simply because it is Blackwood's Magazine, without, during the intensity of your emotion, remembering that Colburn's or the Monthly, or the London, or the European, or the Ladies', or the Gentleman's, exists. No doubt, as soon as the emotion has somewhat subsided, you do begin to think of the other periodicals. On stooping to pick up the number that so aroused your wrath, you say, "I will subscribe for the New Monthly,"-yet no sooner have the words escaped your lips than you blush, like a flower unseen, at 10 VOL. I. your own folly. Your own folly stares you in the face, and out of countenance-you bless your stars that nobody was in the room at the time-you re-read the article, and perceive, in your amended temper, that it is full of the most important truths, couched in the most elegant language. You dissolve into tears of remorse and penitence, -and vow to remain a faithful subscriber on this side-at least of the grave. Although, therefore, we cannot say that we prefer the thrush to the blackbird, yet we agree with you in thinking it a most delightful bird. Where a thrush is, we defy you to anticipate his song in the morning. He is indeed an early riser. By the way, chanticleer is far from being so. You hear him crowing away from shortly after midnight, and, in your simplicity, may suppose him to be up, and strutting about the premises. Far from it ;-he is at that very moment perched in his polygamy between two of his fattest wives. The sultan will perhaps not stir a foot for several hours to come; while all the time the thrush, having long ago rubbed his eyes, is on his topmost twig, broad awake, and charming the ear of dawn with his beautiful vociferation. During midday he disappears, and is mute; but again at dewy even, as at dewy morn, he pours his pipe like a prodigal, nor ceases sometimes, when night has brought the moon and stars. Best beloved, and most beautiful of all thrushes that ever broke from the blue-spotted shell!-thou who, for five springs, hast "hung thy procreant cradle" among the roses, and honeysuckles, and ivy, and clematis, that embower in bloom the lattice of my cottagestudy-how farest thou now in the snow!-Consider the whole place as your own, my dear bird; and remember, that when the gardener's children sprinkle food for you and yours all along your favourite haunts, that it is done by our orders. And when all the earth is green again, and all the sky blue, you will welcome us to our rural domicile, with light feet running before us among the winter leaves, and then skim away to your new nest in the old spot, then about to be somewhat more cheerful in the undisturbing din of the human life within the flowery walls. Why do the songs of the Blackbird and Thrush make us think of the songless STARLING? It matters not. We do think of him, and see him too-a beautiful bird, and his abode is majestic. What an object of wonder and awe is an old castle to a boyish imagination! Its height how dreadful! up to whose mouldering edges his fear carries him, and hangs him over the battlements! What beauty in those unapproachable wall-flowers, that cast a brightness on the old brown stones of the edifice, and make the horror pleasing! That sound so far below is the sound of a stream the eye cannot reach—of a waterfall echoing for ever among the black rocks and pools. The schoolboy knows but little of the history of the old castle,—but that little is of war, and witchcraft, and imprisonment, and bloodshed. The ghostly glimmer of antiquity appals him -he visits the ruin only with a companion and at midday. There and then it was that we first saw a starling. We heard something wild and wonderful in their harsh scream, as they sat upon the edge of the battlements, or flew out of the chinks and crannies. There were martens too, so different in their looks from the pretty house-swallowsjackdaws clamouring afresh at every time we waved our hats, or vainly slung a pebble towards their nests-and one grove of elms, to whose top, much lower than the castle, came, ever and anon, some noiseless heron from the muirs. Higher and higher than ever rose the tower of Belus, soars and sings the LARK, the lyrical poet of the sky. Listen, listen! and the more remote the bird, the louder is his hymn in heaven. He seems in his loftiness, to have left the earth for ever, and to have forgotten his lowly nest. The primroses and daisies, and all the sweet hill-flowers, must be unremembered in the lofty region of light. But just as the lark is lost-he and his song together-both are again seen and heard wavering down. the sky, and in a little while he is walking contented along the furrows of the brairded corn, or on the clover lea, that has not felt the plough-share for half a century. In our boyish days, we never felt that the spring had really come, till the clear-singing lark went careering before our gladdened eyes away up to heaven. Then all the earth wore a vernal look, and the ringing sky said, "winter is over and gone." As we roamed, on a holiday, over the wide pastoral moors, to angle in the lochs and pools, unless the day were very cloudy, the song of some lark or other was still warbling aloft, and made a part of our happiness. The creature could not have been more joyful in the skies, than we were on the greensward. We, too, had our wings, and flew through our holiday. Thou soul of glee! who still leddest our flight in all our pastimes!-bold, bright, and beautiful child of Erin!-for many and many a long, long year hast thou been mingled with the dust! Dead and gone, as if they had never been, all the captivations of thy voice, eye, laugh, motion, and hand, open as day to "melting charity !"-He, too, the grave and thoughtful English boy, whose exquisite scholarship we all so enthusiastically admired, without one single particle of hopeless envy, and who accompanied us on all our wildest expeditions, rather from affection to his playmates than any love of their sports,—he who, timid and unadventurous as he seemed to be, yet rescued little Marian of the Brae from a drowning death, when so many grown up men stood aloof in selfish fear,-gone, too, for ever art thou, my beloved Edward Harrington! and, after a few brilliant years in the oriental clime, -"on Hoogley's banks afar, Looks down on thy lone tomb the evening star." Methinks we hear the "song o' the GRAY LINTIE,” perhaps the darling bird of Scotland. None other is more tenderly sung of in our old ballads. When the simple and fervent love-poets of our pastoral times first applied to the maiden the words " my bonnie burdie," they must have been thinking of the gray lintie-its plumage ungaudy and soberly pure-its shape elegant, yet unobtrusiveand its song various without any effort-now rich, gay, sprightly, but never rude or riotous-now tender, almost mournful, but never gloomy or desponding. So, too, are all its habits endearing and delightful. It is social, yet not averse to solitude, singing often in groups, and as often by itself in the furze-brake, or on the briary knoll. You often find the lintie's nest in the most solitary places-in some small self-sown clump of trees by the brink of a wild hill-stream, or on the tangled edge of a forest; and just as often you find it in the hedgerow of the cottage garden, or in a bower within, or even in an old gooseberry bush that has grown into a sort of tree. One wild and beautiful place we well remember-ay, the very bush in which we first found a gray linnet's nest-for, in our native parish, from some cause or other, it was rather a rarish bird. That far-away day is as distinct as the present Now. Imagine, friend, first, a little well surrounded with wild cresses on the moor, something like a rivulet flows from it, or rather you see a deep tinge of verdure, the line of which, you believe, must be produced by the oozing moisture-you follow it, by and by there is a descent palpable to your feet-then you find yourself between low broomy knolls, that, heightening every step, become ere long banks, and braes, and hills. You are surprised now to see a stream, and look round for its source there seem now to be a hundred small sources in fissures, and springs on every side-you hear the murmurs of its course over beds of sand and gravel—and hark, a waterfall! A tree or two begins to shake its tresses on the horizon-a birch or a rowan. You get ready your angle-and by the time you have panniered three dozen, you are at a wooden bridge-you fish the pool above it with the delicate dexterity of a Boaz, capture the monarch of the flood, and on lifting your eyes from his starry side as he gasps his last on the silvery shore, you behold a cottage, at one gable end an ash, at the other a sycamore, and standing perhaps at the lonely door, a maiden far more beautiful than any angel. - This is the age of confessions; and why, therefore, may we not make a confession of first love? I had finished my sixteenth year, I was almost as tall as I am now,—almost as tall! Yes, yes,-for my figure was then straight as an arrow, and almost like an arrow in its flight. I had given over bird-nesting,-but 1 had not ceased to visit the dell where first I found the gray lintie's brood. Tale-writers are told by critics to remember that the young shepherdesses of Scotland are not beautiful as the fictions of a poet's dream. But SHE was beautiful beyond poetry. She was |