How genius shone o'er thy fine features, yet how pale thou ever wast; thou who sat'st then by the Sailor's side, and listened to his sallies with a mournful smile—friend! dearest to our soul! loving us far better than we deserved; for though faultless thou, yet tolerant of all our frailties—and in those days of hope from thy lips how elevating was praise! Yet how seldom do we think of thee! For months—years—not at all—not once—sometimes not even when by some chance we hear your name! It meets our eyes written on books that once belonged to you and that you gave us—and yet of yourself it recalls no image. Yet we sank down to the floor on hearing thou wast dead—ungrateful to thy memory for many years we were not—but it faded away till we forgot thee utterly, except when sleep showed thy grave!
Methinks we hear the song of the Grey Lintie, 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 Grey Lintie—its plumage ungaudy and soberly pure—its shape elegant yet unobtrusive—and its song various without any effort—now rich, gay, sprightly, but never rude nor 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 briery 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 grey lintie's nest—for in our 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, and 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—and 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 like a fairy or an angel.
This is the Age of Confessions; and why, therefore, may we not make a confession of first-love? We had finished our sixteenth year—and we were almost as tall as we are now; for our figure was then straight as an arrow, and almost like an arrow in its flight. We had given over bird-nesting—but we had not ceased to visit the dell where first we found the Grey 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 so then, when passion and imagination were young—and her image, her undying, unfading image, is so now, when passion and imagination are old, and when from eye and soul have disappeared much of the beauty and glory both of nature and life. We loved her from the first moment that our eyes met—and we see their light at this moment—the same soft, burning light, that set body and soul on fire. She was but a poor shepherd's daughter; but what was that to us, when we heard her voice singing one of her old plaintive ballads among the braes?—When we sat down beside her—when the same plaid was drawn over our shoulders in the rain-storm—when we asked her for a kiss, and was not refused—for what had she to fear in her beauty, and her innocence, and her filial piety?—and were we not a mere boy, in the bliss of passion, ignorant of deceit or dishonour, and with a heart open to the eyes of all as to the gates of heaven? What music was in that stream! Could "Sabean odours from the spicy shores of Araby the Blest" so penetrate our soul, as that breath, balmier than the broom on which we sat, forgetful of all other human life! Father, mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, and aunts, and cousins, and all the tribe of friends that would throw us off—if we should be so base and mad as to marry a low-born, low-bred, ignorant, uneducated, crafty, ay, crafty and designing beggar—were all forgotten in our delirium—if indeed it were delirium—and not an everlastingly-sacred devotion to nature and to truth. For in what were we deluded? A voice—a faint and dewy voice—deadened by the earth that fills up her grave, and by the turf that, at this very hour, is expanding its primroses to the dew of heaven—answers, "In nothing!"
"Ha! ha! ha!" exclaims some reader in derision. "Here's an attempt at the pathetic!—a miserable attempt indeed; for who cares about the death of a mean hut girl?—we are sick of low life." Why, as to that matter, who cares for the death of any one mortal being? Who weeps for the death of the late Emperor of all the Russias? Who wept over Napoleon the Great? When Chatham or Burke, Pitt or Fox died—don't pretend to tell lies about a nation's tears. And if yourself, who, perhaps, are not in low life, were to die in half an hour (don't be alarmed), all who knew you—except two or three of your bosom friends, who, partly from being somewhat dull, and partly from wishing to be decent, might whine—would walk along George Street, at the fashionable hour of three, the very day after your funeral. Nor would it ever enter their heads to abstain from a dinner at the Club, ordered perhaps by yourself a fortnight ago, at which time you were in rude health, merely because you had foolishly allowed a cold to fasten upon your lungs, and carry you off in the prime and promise of your professional life. In spite of all your critical slang, therefore, Mr Editor, or Master Contributor to some Literary Journal, SHE, though a poor Scottish Herd, was most beautiful; and when, but a week after taking farewell of her, we went, according to our tryst, to fold her in our arms, and was told by her father that she was dead,—ay, dead—that she had no existence—that she was in a coffin,—when we awoke from the dead-fit in which we had lain on the floor of that cottage, and saw her in her grave-clothes within an hour to be buried—when we stood at her burial—and knew that never more were we or the day to behold her presence—we learned then how immeasurably misery can surpass happiness—that the soul is ignorant of its own being, till all at once a thunder-stone plunges down its depths, and groans gurgle upwards upbraiding heaven.
How easily can the heart change its mood from the awful to the solemn—from the solemn to the sweet—and from the sweet to the gay—while the mirth of this careless moment is unconsciously tempered by the influence of that holy hour that has subsided but not died, and continues to colour the most ordinary emotion, as the common things of earth look all lovelier in imbibed light, even after the serene moon that had yielded it is no more visible in her place! Most gentle are such transitions in the calm of nature and of the heart; all true poetry is full of them; and in music how pleasant are they, or how affecting! Those alternations of tears and smiles, of fervent aspirations and of quiet thoughts! The organ and the Æolian harp! As the one has ceased pealing praise, we can list the other whispering it—nor feels the soul any loss of emotion in the change—still true to itself and its wondrous nature—just as it is so when from the sunset clouds it turns its eyes to admire the beauty of a dewdrop or an insect's wing.
Now, we hear many of our readers crying out against the barbarity of confining the free denizens of the air in wire or wicker Cages. Gentle readers, do, we pray, keep your compassion for other objects. Or, if you are disposed to be argumentative with us, let us just walk down stairs to the larder, and tell the public truly what we there behold—three brace of partridges, two ditto of moorfowl, a cock pheasant, poor fellow,—a man and his wife of the aquatic or duck kind, and a woodcock, vainly presenting his long Christmas bill,—
"Some sleeping kill'd—
All murder'd."
Why, you are indeed a most logical reasoner, and a most considerate Christian, when you launch out into an invective against the cruelty exhibited in our Cages. Let us leave this den of murder, and have a glass of our home-made frontignac in our own Sanctum. Come, come, sir,—look on this newly-married couple of Canaries.—The architecture of their nest is certainly not of the florid order, but my Lady Yellowlees sits on it a well-satisfied bride. Come back in a day or two, and you will see her nursing triplets. Meanwhile, hear the ear-piercing fife of the bridegroom!—Where will you find a set of happier people, unless perhaps it be in our parlour, or our library, or our nursery? For, to tell you the truth, there is a cage or two in almost every room of the house. Where is the cruelty—here, or in your blood-stained larder? But you must eat, you reply. We answer—not necessarily birds. The question is about birds—cruelty to birds; and were that sagacious old wild-goose, whom one single moment of heedlessness brought last Wednesday to your hospitable board, at this moment alive, to bear a part in our conversation, can you dream that, with all your ingenuity and eloquence, you could persuade him—the now defunct and disjected—that you had been under the painful necessity of eating him with stuffing and apple-sauce?
It is not in nature that an ornithologist should be cruel—he is most humane. Mere skin-stuffers are not ornithologists—and we have known more than one of that tribe who would have had no scruple in strangling their own mothers, or reputed fathers. Yet if your true ornithologist cannot catch a poor dear bird alive, he must kill it—and leave you to weep for its death. There must be a few victims out of myriads of millions—and thousands and tens of thousands are few; but the ornithologist knows the seasons when death is least afflictive—he is merciful in his wisdom—for the spirit of knowledge is gentle—and "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," reconcile him to the fluttering and ruffled plumage blood-stained by death. 'Tis hard, for example, to be obliged to shoot a Zenaida dove! Yet a Zenaida dove must die for Audubon's Illustrations. How many has he loved in life, and tenderly preserved! And how many more pigeons of all sorts, cooked in all styles, have you devoured—ay, twenty for his one—you being a glutton and epicure in the same inhuman form, and he being contented at all times with the plainest fare—a salad perhaps of water-cresses plucked from a spring in the forest glade, or a bit of pemmican, or a wafer of portable soup melted in the pot of some squatter—and shared with the admiring children before a drop has been permitted to touch his own abstemious lips.