than thought, into mid air, to sport one moment with aerial beings. Again it sweeps in silence past our feet, over the spiral reeds, around, above us, gliding through the shadows, and flickering through the sunshine; but never resting, and yet never weary; for the spirit than animates its bounding bosom, and stretches forth its giddy wing, is one that knows no sleep until light has vanished from the world, no sadness until the sweets of summer are exhausted. And then arises that vague mysterious longing for a milder sphere that irrepressible energy to do and dare what to mere reason would appear impracticable; and forth it launches with its faithful companions, true to the appointed time, upon the boundless ocean of infinitude, trusting to it knows not what, yet trusting still. With the cuckoo, our associations are in some respects the same as with the swallow, except that we are in the habit of regarding it simply as a voice; and what a voice! How calm, and clear, and rich! How full of all that can be told of the endless profu sion of summer's charms !—of the hawthorn, in its scented bloom, of the blossoms of the apple, and the silvery waving of the fresh green corn, of the cowslip in the meadow, and the wild rose by the woodland path; and last, but not least in its poetical beauty, of the springing up of the meek-eyed daisy, to welcome the foot of the traveller, upon the soft and grassy turf. Above all other birds, the dove is most intimately and familiarly associated in our minds with ideas of the quiet seclusion of rural life, and the enjoyment of peace and love. This simple bird, by no means remarkable for its sagacity, so soft in its colouring, and graceful in its form, that we cannot behold it without being conscious of ita perfect loveliness, is in some instances endowed with an extraordinary instinct, which adds greatly to its poetical interest. That species called the carrier pigeon, has often been celebrated for the faithfulness with which it pursues its mysterious way, but never more beautifully than in the following lines by Moore. "The bird let loose in eastern skies, When hastening fondly home, But high she shoots through air and light, Above all low delay, Where nothing earthly bounds her flight, So grant me, God, from every stain But neither the wonderful instinct of this undeviating messenger, nor even the classical association of the two white doves with the queen of love and beauty, are more powerful in awakening poetical ideas than the simple cooing of our own wood pigeon, heard sometimes in the silent solemnity of summer's noon, when there is no other sound but the hum of the wandering bee, as he comes laden and rejoicing home, when the sun is alone in the heavens, and the cattle are sleeping in the shade, and not a single boughs, and the deep dark shadows of the breath of air is whispering through the elm and the sycamore lie motionless upon the earth-or, in the cool evening, when the shadows, less distinct, are lengthened out upon the lawn, and the golden west is tingwith a brighter hue, when the shepherd is ing here and there the bright green foliage numbering his flock, and the labourer is rewith a brighter hue, when the shepherd is turning to his rest, it is then that the soft sweet cooing of the dove, bursting forth, as it were, from the pure fount of love and joy within its breast, sounds like the lullaby of nature, and diffuses over the mind that holy calm which belongs to our best and happiest feelings. From the timid moor cock, the "whirring partridge," and the shy water fowl that scarcely dares to plume its beauteous wing in the moonlight of our autumnal evening, when the floods are high, and the wind rushes whispering through the long sere grass, down to the russet wren that looks so gravely conscious of the proprieties of life, there is scarcely one class of the feathered tribe to which imagination does not readily and naturally assign an intellectual, or rather a moral character, associating it with feelings and capabilities, of which the little flutterer is (perhaps happily for itself) unconscious. the owl is particularly distinguished; and such is the grave aspect of its countenance, so nearly resembling the human face in the traits which are considered as indicative of sagacity and earnest thought, that the ancients dignified this bird by making it the emblem of wisdom, though there seems to be little in its real nature to merit such exaltation. From the extreme timidity of the owl, and its habitual concealment from the light of day, it is difficult to become familiar with its character. We see it sailing forth on expanded wings in the gray twilight of the evening, when other birds have retired to their nightly rest; or we behold it in the distance a misty speck, half light, half shadow, just visible in the same proportion, and with the same obscurity of outline and colour, as in our infancy we fancied that spiritual beings from another world made themselves perceptible in this. Besides which, the voice of the owl, as it comes shrieking on the midnight blast, and its mysterious breath The peacock is a striking illustration of this fact. The beauty of his plumage is in all probability lost upon him, yet because it consists of that rich and gaudy colouring, which is consistent with our notions of what vanity delights in, and because the lengthened garniture of his tail requires that for convenience and repose he should often place himself in an elevated situation, he has obtained a character which there is little in his real nature to justify, and as an emblem of pride, is placed by the side of Juno in her regal dignity. This tendency of the mind to throw over sensible objects a colouring of its own, is also proved by the character which mankind have bestowed upon the robin redbreast, in reality a jealous, quarrelsome, and unamiable bird; yet such is the unobtrusive and meek beauty of its little form, the touching pathos of its "still small voice," and the appeals it seems ever to be making to the kindness and protection of man, that the poet perpetually speaks of the robin with tenderness and love, and evenings, half sighs, half whispers, heard the rude ravager of the woods spares a breast so lovely, and so full of simple melody. Birds as well as other animals, owe much of their poetical interest to the fabulous part of their history; thus, the pelican is said to feed her young with the life-blood flowing from her own bosom, and this unnatural act of maternal affection is quoted by the poet as a favourite simile for self-devotion under various forms. Of the swan it is said and sung, that in dying she breathes forth a strain of plaintive song; but even without this poetical fable, the swan is associated with so much that is graceful and lovely, that we cannot think of this majestic queen of the water, sailing forth like a snow-white gallery on the silver tide, without losing our-ble forest, in the deep recesses of the pathselves in a romantic dream of lakes and rivers, and that sylvan scenery which the swan is known to frequent. amongst the ivy wreaths of the ruin, all tend to give to this bird a character of sadness, solemnity and awe. The raven, strikingly sagacious and venerable in its appearance, is still believed by the superstitious to be a bird of ill omen; and much as we may be disposed to despise such prognostications as the flight, or the cry of different birds, there is something in the habits, but especially in the voice of the raven, which gives it a strange and almost fearful character. It seems to hold no communion with the joyous spirits, to have no association with the happy scenes of earth; but leads a lengthened and unsocial life amongst the gloomy shades of the venera less mountain, or on the rocky summit of the beetling crag that overlooks the ocean's blue abyss; and when it goes forth, with its sable pinions spread like the wings of a dark We have yet given our attention only to those birds whose nature and habits are pro-angel upon the wind, its hoarse and hollow ductive of pleasing associations. There are others no less poetical, whose home is in the desert or the mountain, whose life is in the storm or on the field of carnage; and it is to these especially that fabulous history has given importance and celebrity. For its mysterious and gloomy character, croak echoes from rock to rock, as if telling, in those dreary and appalling tones, of the fleshy feast to which it is hastening, of the death-pangs of the mountain deer, of the cry of the perishing kid, and of the bones of the shipwrecked seaman whitening in the surge. or almost any other than what it is, it would have broken the harmony of the picture; but its breast is of the form of the ocean waves, and the misty hue of its darker plumage is like the blending of the vapoury clouds with the cold blue of the deep sea below. Not only in its colouring, but in the wild gracefulness of its movements, in its shrill cry, in its swift and circling flight, and in the reckless freedom with which it sails above the drear abyss, its dark shadow reflected in the hollow of the concave waters, and its white plumage flashing like a gleam of light, or like the ocean spray, from rock to rock, it assimilates so entirely with the whole character of the scene, that we look upon it as a living atom separated from the troubled and chaotic elements, a personification of the spirit of the storm, a combination of its foam and its darkness, its light and its depth, its swiftness and its profound solemnity. To the eagle mankind have agreed in assigning a sort of regal character, from the majesty of his bearing, and the proud preeminence he maintains amongst the feathered tribe; from the sublimity of his chosen home, far above the haunts of man and meaner animals, from the self-seclusion in which he holds himself apart from the general association of living and familiar things, and from the beauty and splendour of his sagacious eye, which shrinks not from the dazzling glare of the sun itself. Innumerable are the fables founded upon the peculiar habits of this bird, all tending to exalt him in the scale of moral and intellectual importance; but to the distinction conferred upon him by the ancients when they raised him to a companionship with Jove, is mainly to be attributed the poetical interest with which his character is universally invested. There are many birds whose peculiar haunts and habits render them no less useful to the painter than the poet, by adding to the pictorial effect of his landscape. In the sheet of crystal water which skirts the nobleman's domain, and widens in front of his castellated halls, we see the stately swan; on the shady margin of the quiet stream, imbosomed in a copes-wood forest, the shy water hen; the jackdaw on the old gray steeple of the village church; and a company of rooks winging their social way, wherever the scenery is of a peaceful, culti--the flying fish and the dolphin. The forvated, or rural character. By these means our inimitable Turner delights to give his pictures their highly poetical character. The heron is one of his favorite birds, and when it stands motionless and solitary upon a broken fragment of dark rock, looking down into the clear deep water, with that imperturbable aspect of never-ending melancholy which marks it out as a fit accompaniment of wild and secluded scenery, we feel almost as if the genius of the place were personified before us, and silent, and lonely, and unfrequented as these wilds may be, that there is at least one spirit which finds companionship in their solitude. But above all other birds, the seagull, as it diversifies the otherwise monotonous aspect of the ocean, is an essential accompaniment to every representation of a sea view. Had the colour of this bird been red or yellow, Inferior to birds in their pictorial beauty, though scarcely less conducive to poetical interest, are the various tribes of insects that people the earth and animate the air; but before turning our attention to these, it may be well to think for a moment in what manner the poet's imagination is affected by fishes and reptiles. Of the poetry of fishes little can be said. Two kinds only occur to me as being familiar in the language of poetry, and conducive to its figurative charm mer, in its transient and feeble flight, has been made the subject of some beautiful lines by Moore; and because of the perpetual dangers which await it from innumerable enemies, both in sea and air, it is often adopted as a simile for the helpless and persecuted children of earth; while the dolphin, from the beauty of its form, and the gorgeous colours which are said to be produced by its last agonies, is celebrated in the poet's lay as an emblem of the glory which shines most conspicuously in the hour of death. -parting day Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues In fearful pre-eminence amongst those animals commonly considered repulsive and degraded, is the serpent, whose history is unavoidably associated with the introduction of sin and sorrow into the world. Whether from this association, or from an instinctive horror of its "venomous tooth," it is certain that the serpent is more generally dreaded, and more loathed, even by those who do not fear it, than any other living thing; and yet how beautiful is its sagacious eye, how rich and splendid its colouring, how delicate the tracery of net-work thrown all over its glossy scales, how graceful and easy its meandering movements, as it winds itself in amongst the rustling grass, how much like one of the fairest objects in nature, a clear blue river wandering through a distant valley! Yet all these claims to beauty, which the serpent unquestionably possesses, entitle it the more to the contempt and abhorrence of mankind, by obtaining for it the character of insinuating guile, which the allurements it is recorded to have practised upon our first mother seem fully to confirm. The toad, save for the "precious jewel in his head," can scarcely be called poetical, though not unfrequenty found in verse as a striking similitude for the extreme of ugliness, as well as for a despicable proneness to grovel in what is earthly and most abhorrent to our finer feelings, from its frequenting low, damp, unwholesome places, the banks of stagnant pools, or the nettles and lone grass that wave over the gloomy and untrodden ground where the dead lie sleeping in their silent rest. and diffusing poison-the locust, whose plagues are often commemorated-the hornet, to whose stings Milton describes Samson as comparing the accumulated agony of his own restless thoughts-the glow-worm, whose feeble light is like a fairy star, beaming upward from a world upon which all other stars look down-and the cankerworm, whose fatal ravages destroy the bloom of youth, and render void the prodigality of summer-passing over all these and many more, in which we recognise the familiar companions of the poet, we turn our attention to the butterfly and the moth, as being most associated with refined and agreeable ideas. The butterfly is like a spiritual attendant upon the poet's path, whether he dreams of it as an emblem of the soul, fluttering around the fair form of Psyche, or beholds it in no less beautiful reality, sporting from flower to flower, and teaching him the highest intellectual lesson-to gather sweets from all. We are apt in our childhood to delight in the legendary tales of fairy people inhabiting the groves, the gardens, or the fields, and regard with an interest almost superstitious, that mysterious circle of dark green verdure that remains from year to year marking the enchanted spot, where once they were believed to hold their midnight revels. Butterflies, in their exquisite colouring, their airy movements, and ephemeral lives, exhibit to the imaginative beholder no slight resemblance to these ideal beings, as they glide through the scented atmosphere of the parterre, nestle in the velvet leaves of the rose, or touch without soiling the snowy bosom of the lily. The snail has certainly no strong claims to poetical merit; yet we often find it serving the purpose of simile and illustration, from its tardy movements, and the faculty it has of carrying about its home, into which it shrinks on the first touch of the enemy. And even the lowly worm has some title to the poet's regard, because of its utter degradation, and the circumstance of its being, of all living things, most liable to injury, at the same time that it is one of the least capable-let the breath of the storm pass over it, of resistance or revenge. and in an instant it perishes. Passing slightly over the multitudinous family of insects, we leave the beetle to his evening flight-the grasshopper, whose merry chirp enlivens the wayside traveller -the bee, perhaps the most poetical of any, from his opposite qualities of collecting honey The butterfly is also strikingly emblematical of that delicacy which shrinks from communion with all that is rude or base. Touch but its gorgeous wings, and their beauty falls away-immure the woodland wanderer in captivity, and it pines and dies The moth is less splendidly beautiful than the butterfly. It has a graver character, and seeks neither the sunshine nor the flowers of summer; yet it is liable to be destroyed by the same degree of violence. Supported by the same slight thread of lite, and scarcely perceptible amongst the evening shadows, except as an animated speck of moving mist, it yet possesses one striking characteristic, of which the poet fails not to avail himself a tendency to seek the light, even when that light must prove fatal to its own existence. How many poetical ideas has this simple tendency excited! But enough on this fertile theme. The reader will doubtless be better pleased to examine the subject farther for himself, than to have additional instances of the poetry of animals placed before his view. It is sufficient to add, in continuation of this subject, that without allowing ourselves time and opportunity to study the nature and habits of animals, we can never really feel that they constitute an important part of the world which we inhabit. We may read of them in books, and even be able to class them according to their names and the genera to which they belong, but they will not enter into our hearts as members of the brotherhood of nature, claiming kindred with ourselves, and entitled to our tenderness and love. Those who have known this fellowship in early life will never lose the remembrance of it to their latest day, but will continue to derive from it refreshment and joy, even as they tread the weary paths that lead through the dark passage of a sordid and troubled existence. The difference between those who study nature for themselves, and those who only read of it in books, is much the same as between those i who travel, and those who make themselves acquainted with the situation of different countries upon a map. The mind of the traveller is stored with associations of a moral and intellectual character, which no map can suggest; and he who occasionally resigns his soul to the genuine influence of nature as it is seen and felt in the external world, will lay up a rich store of deep and precious thought, to be referred to for amusement and consolation through the whole of his after life. Had Pope, our immortal poet, not cultivated this intimate and familiar acquaintance with the nature and habits of animals, he would never have thought them of sufficient importance to be made instrumental in conveying the following severe, yet just reproof to man. "Has God, thou fool! work'd solely for thy good! THE POETRY OF EVENING. ASCENDING in the scale of poetical interest, the seasons might not improperly occupy the next place in our regard, had they not already been especially the theme of one of our ablest poets. To describe the feelings which the seasons in their constant revolutions, are calculated to excite, would therefore only be to recapitulate the language and insult the memory of Thomson. There is one circumstance, however, connected with this subject which demands a moment's attention here. It is the preference for certain seasons of the year evinced by different persons, according to the tone or temperament of their own minds. There are many tests by which human character may be tried. In answering the simple question, "which is your favourite season?" we often betray more than we are aware of at the time, of the nature of our own feelings and character. It is no stretch of imagination to believe, certainly no misstatement of fact to say, that the young and the innocent (or the good, who resemble both) almost invariably make choice of spring as their favourite season of the year; while the naturally morbid and melancholy, or those who have made themselves so by the misuse of their best faculties, as invariably choose autumn. Why so few make choice of summer is not easy to say, unless the oppressive sense of heat is too powerful in its influence upon the body to allow the mind to receive |