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the houseless moor, and although not a ship be on the sea, we can set sail on the wings of imagination, and when wearied, sink down on savage or serene isle, and let drop our anchor below the moon and stars.

But we must pitch our key a little lower, that we may not be suspected of dealing in poetics; and, since we are pedestrians, walk along the level of common life. What pleasure, then, on this earth, transcends a breakfast after a twelve-mile walk? Or is there in this sublunary scene a delight superior to the gradual, dying-away, dreamy drowsiness, that, at the close of a long summerday's journey up hill and down dale, seals up the glimmering eyes with honey-dew, and stretches out, under the loving hands of nourrice Nature, soft as snow, and warm as sunbeams, the whole elongated animated economy, steeped in rest divine, from the organ of veneration to the point of the great toe, be it on a bed of down, chaff, straw, or heather, in palace, hall, hotel, or hut? Nobody interferes with you in meddling officiousness; neither landlord, bagman, waiter, chamber-maid, boots; -you are left to yourself without being neglected. Your bell may not be emulously answered by all the menials on the establishment, but a smug or shock-headed drawer appears in good time; and if mine host may not always dignify your dinner by the deposition of the first dish, yet, influenced by the rumour that soon spreads through the premises, he bows farewell at your departure, with a shrewd suspicion that you are a nobleman in disguise; and such, for any thing we know to the contrary, you may be, and next to the Earl of Liverpool, the Bishop of Chester, the Marquis of Lansdown, and my Lord Lauderdale, the most conspicuous ornament of the Upper House.

A GLANCE OVER SELBY'S ORNITHOLOGY.

(Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1826.)

WHAT a splendid work! This is the kind of ornamental furniture, in which we, were we men of fortune, would delight. The tables in our passages, galleries, parlours, boudoirs, and drawing-rooms should groan— no, not groan-but smile, with suitably-bound volumes of Natural History, on the opening of any one of which, would suddenly gleam before us some rich and rare, some bright and beauteous, some wonderful and wild, some strange and fantastic, some fierce and terribie, some minute or mighty production of the great mother— Nature. But we are not men of fortune; and a magnificent folio like this would seem altogether out of its place among the permanent furniture of our sober-suited cell. Hither, notwithstanding, do such magnificent folios ever and anon find out their way, carried tenderly under the arm, or borne triumphantly on the shoulder, of some rich friend's confidential servant, wondering, as he ascends the spiral staircase, how many flats really go to the composition of such a house. Then the college library is at our service for every year do we, like Dr. Nimmo, matriculate; the stores of the Wernerian Society are open to us as a member of that flourishing institution; and not a bookseller in the city is reluctant to indulge us with a week's possession of the most costly and dazzling volumes, often for our own sakes, but oftener for the sake of THE MAN-Whose friendship has been the chief blessing of our life-CHRISTOPHER NORTH.

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What a treasure, for instance, during a rainy forenoon in the country, is such a gloriously illuminated work as this of Mr. Selby, to a small party uncertain in what spirit they shall woo the hours! Let them assemble

round a circular table, boy and virgin alternately taking seat, and let the most scientific undertake to illustrate the plates in a desultory lecture. As the professor proceeds, his audience will be inspired to speak by the delight of surprise and wonder-their own memories will supply them with many interesting anecdotes of the "gay creatures of the element," and they will be pleased to discover how much of natural history is known to every intelligent and observant mind that has had any opportunities of living much among the woods and fields. Each individual in the circle-however limited the range of his experience-will have his own small-not insignificant-story to tell; a hint from one leads to a disquisition from another; the conversation becomes more erudite with the comparative biography of animals; and perhaps some female Bewick or Bingley may be there, who, with all the modesty of genius, in a voice soft as the light of her humble eyes, throws in a few discriminative touches of character, that bring out at once the nature of the creature contemplated, be it locust or leviathan, lamb or lion, eagle or dove.

Now and then it is our happy lot to take part in such conversaziones, with on each side a sweet docile maiden, commending our commentaries by a whisper or a smile; but at present we are all alone in our pensive citadel-not a mouse stirring, although it is midnight—the fire, when about to glimmer its last, restored to life by another mouthful of fuel-and our lamp, trimmed anew into a sort of spiritual lustre, seeming to enjoy the silence it illumines. That pure and steady light, which can be made to let fall its shadows as we will, is streaming on the plumage of phantom-birds, bright as the realities in the woods and on the mountains, and we shall beguile ourselves away into the solitary forest haunts, well pleased to be recalled by the rustle of the turning page, from our imaginary travels back again to the steadfastness of our beloved hearth," a dream within a dream!"

The GOLDEN EAGLE leads the van of our birds of prey -and there she sits in her usual carriage when in a state of rest. Her hunger and her thirst have been appeased -her wings are folded up in a dignified tranquillity-her

talons grasping a leafless branch, are almost hidden by the feathers of her breast-her sleepless eye has lost something of its ferocity-and the royal bird is almost serene in her solitary state on the cliff. The gorcock unalarmed crows among the moors and mosses-the blackbird whistles in the birken shaw-and the cony erects his ears at the mouth of his burrow, and whisks away frolicsome among the whins or heather.

There is no index to the hour-neither light nor sha- . dow-no cloud. But from the composed aspect of the bird, we may suppose it to be the hush of evening after a day of successful foray by land and sea. The imps in the eyrie have been fed, and their hungry cry will not be heard till the dawn. The mother has there taken up her watchful rest, till in darkness she may glide up to her brood, and the sire is somewhere sitting within view among the rocks,—a sentinel whose eye, and ear, and nostril are true, in exquisite fineness of sense, to their trust, and on whom rarely, and as if by a miracle, can steal the adventurous shepherd or huntsman, to wreak vengeance with his rifle on the spoiler of sheep-walk and forest chase.

Yet sometimes it chanceth that the yellow lustre of her keen, wild, fierce eye is veiled, even in daylight, by the film of sleep. Perhaps sickness has been at the heart of the dejected bird, or fever wasted her wing. The sun may have smitten her, or the storm driven her against a rock. Then hunger and thirst,-which, in pride of plumage she scorned, and which only made her fiercer on the edge of her unfed eyrie, as she whetted her beak on the flint-stone, and clutched the strong heather-stalks in her talons, as if she were anticipating prey,—quell her courage, and in famine she eyes afar off the fowls she is unable to pursue, and with one stroke strike to earth. Her flight is heavier and heavier each succeeding dayshe ventures not to cross the great glens, with or without lochs-but flaps her way from rock to rock on the same mountain-side-and finally drawn by her weakness into gradual descent, she is discovered by gray dawn far below the region of snow, assailed and insulted by the meanest carrion, and a bullet whizzing through her heart,

down she topples, and soon as she is despatched by blows from the rifle-butt, the shepherd stretches out his foe's carcase on the sward, eight feet from wing to wing.

But, lo! the character of the Golden Eagle, when she has pounced, and is exulting over her prey! With her head drawn back between the crescent of her uplifted wings, which she will not fold till that prey be devoured, eye glaring cruel joy, neck-plumage bristling, tail-feathers fan-spread, and talons driven through the victim's entrails and heart, there she is new-alighted on the ledge of a precipice, and fancy hears her yell and its echo. Beak and talons, all her life-long, have had a stain of blood, for the murderess observes no Sabbath, and seldom dips them in loch or sea, except when dashing down suddenly among the terrified water-fowl from her watch-tower in the sky. The week-old fawn had left the doe's side but for a momentary race along the edge of the coppice,—a rustle and a shadow, and the burden is borne off to the cliffs of Benevis! In an instant the small animal is dead after a short exultation-torn into pieces-and by eagles and eaglets devoured, its disgorged bones mingle with those of many other creatures, encumbering the eyrie, and strewed around it over the bloody platform on which the young demons crawl forth to enjoy the sunshine.

O for the Life of an Eagle written by himself! It would outsell the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater; and how would it confound the critics of the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews! No editor but North could do justice to it in a leading article. Proudly would he, or she, write of birth and parentage. On the rock of ages he first opened his eyes to the sun, in noble instinct affronting and outstaring the light. The great glen of Scotland-hath it not been the inheritance of his ancestors for many thousand years? No polluting mixture of ignoble blood, from intermarriages of necessity with kite, buzzard, hawk, or falcon. No, the golden eagles of GlenFalloch, surnamed the sun-starers, have formed alliances with the golden eagles of Cruachan, Benlawers, Shehallion, and Mar-Forest, the lightning-glints, the floodfallers, the storm-wheelers, the cloud-cleavers, ever since the flood. The education of the autobiographer had not

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