CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.

FOURTH CANTICLE.

WELCOME then the RING-DOVE-the QUEST-or CUSHAT, for that is the very bird we have had in our imagination. There is his full-length portrait, stealthily sketched as the Solitary was sitting on a tree. You must catch him napping, indeed, before he will allow you an opportunity of colouring him on the spot from nature. It is not that he is more jealous or suspicious of man's approach than other bird; for never shall we suffer ourselves to believe that any tribe of the descendants of the Dove that brought to the Ark the olive tidings of reappearing earth, can in their hearts hate or fear the race of the children of man. But Nature has made the Cushat a lover of the still forest-gloom; and therefore, when his lonesome haunts are disturbed or intruded on, he flies to some yet profounder, some more central solitude, and folds his wing in the hermitage of a Yew, sown in the time of the ancient Britons.

It is the Stock-Dove, we believe, not the Ring-Dove, from whom are descended all the varieties of the races of Doves. What tenderer praise can we give them all, than that the Dove is the emblem of Innocence, and that the name of innocence— not of frailty—is Woman? When Hamlet said the reverse, he was thinking, you know, of the Queen-not of Ophelia. Is not woman by nature chaste as the Dove-as the Dove faithful? Sitting all alone with her babe in her bosom, is she not as a Dove devoted to her own nest? Murmureth she not a pleasant welcome to her wearied home-returned husband, even like the Dove among the woodlands when her mate re-alights on the pine? Should her spouse be taken from her and disappear, doth not her heart sometimes break, as they say it happens to the Dove? But oftener far, findeth not the widow

that her orphans are still fed by her own hand, that is filled with good things by Providence; till grown up, and able to shift for themselves, away they go-just as the poor Dove lamenteth for her mate in the snare of the fowler, yet feedeth her young continually through the whole day, till away too go they―alas, in neither case, perhaps, ever more to return! We dislike all favouritism, all foolish and capricious partiality for particular bird or beast; but dear, old, sacred associations, will tell upon all one thinks or feels towards any place or person in this world of ours, near or remote. God forbid we should criticise the Cushat! We desire to speak of him as tenderly as of a friend buried in our early youth. Too true it is, that often and oft, when schoolboys, have we striven to steal upon him in his solitude, and to shoot him to death. In morals, and in religion, it would be heterodox to deny that the will is as the deed. Yet in cases of high and low-way robbery and murder, there does seem, treating the subject not in philosophical but popular style, to be some little difference between the two; at least we hope so, for otherwise we can with difficulty imagine one person not deserving to be ordered for execution, on Wednesday next, between the hours of eight and nine ante-meridian. Happily, however, for our future peace of mind, and not improbably for the whole confirmation of our character, our Guardian Genius-(every boy has one constantly at his side, both during school and play hours, though it must be confessed sometimes a little remiss in his duty, for the nature even of angelical beings is imperfect)— always so contrived it, that with all our cunning we never could kill a Cushat. Many a long hour-indeed whole Saturdays have we lain perdue among broom and whins, the beautiful green and yellow skirting of sweet Scotia's woods, watching his egress or ingress, our gun ready cocked, and finger on trigger, that on the flapping of his wings not a moment might be lost in bringing him to the ground. But couch where we might, no Cushat ever came near our insidious lair. Now and then a Magpie-birds who, by the by, when they suspect you of any intention of shooting them, are as distant in their manners as Cushats themselves, otherwise as impudent as Cockneys —would come, hopping in continual tail-jerks, with his really beautiful plumage, if one could bring oneself to think it so, and then sport the pensive within twenty yards of the muzzle

of Brown-Bess, impatient to let fly. But our soul burned, our heart panted for a Cushat; and in that strong fever-fit of passion, could we seek to slake our thirst for that wild blood with the murder of a thievish eavesdropper of a Pye? The Blackbird, too, often dropt out of the thicket into an open glade in the hazel-shaws, and the distinctness of his yellow bill showed he was far within shot-range. Yet, let us do ourselves justice, we never in all our born days dreamt of shooting a Blackbird -him that scares away sadness from the woodland twilight gloom, at morn or eve; whose anthem, even in those dim days when Nature herself it might be well thought were melancholy, forceth the firmament to ring with joy. Once "the snow-white cony sought its evening meal," unconscious of our dangerous. vicinity, issuing with erected ears from the wood edge. That last was, we confess, such a temptation to touch the trigger, that had we resisted it we must have been either more or less than boy. We fired; and kicking up his heels, doubtless in fright, but as it then seemed to us, during our disappointment, much rather in frolic-nay, absolute derision-away bounced Master Rabbit to his burrow, without one particle of soft silvery wool on sward or bush, to bear witness to our unerring aim. As if the branch on which he had been sitting were broken, away then went the crashing Cushat through the intermingling sprays. The free flapping of his wings was soon heard in the air above the tree-tops, and ere we could recover from our almost bitter amazement, the creature was murmuring to his mate on her shallow nest-a far-off murmur, solitary and profound to reach unto which, through the tangled mazes of the forest, would have required a separate sense, instinct, or faculty, which we did not possess. So, skulking out of our hiding-place, we made no comment on the remark of homewardplodding labourer, who had heard the report, and now smelt the powder-" Cushats are geyan kittle birds to kill"—but returned, with our shooting-bag as empty as our stomach, to the Manse.

"Why do the birds sing on Sunday?" said once a little boy to us and we answered him in a lyrical ballad, which we have lost. But although the birds certainly do sing on Sunday-behaviour that with our small gentle Calvinist, who dearly loved them, caused some doubts of their being so innocent as during the week-days they appeared to be-we

cannot set down their fault to the score of ignorance. Is it in the holy superstition of the world-wearied heart that man believes the inferior creatures to be conscious of the calm of the Sabbath, and that they know it to be the day of our rest? Or is it that we transfer the feeling of our inward calm to all the goings-on of Nature, and thus imbue them with a character of reposing sanctity, existing only in our own spirits ? Both solutions are true. The instincts of those creatures we know only in their symptoms and their effects, in the wonderful range of action over which they reign. Of the instincts themselves as feelings or ideas-we know not anything, nor ever can know; for an impassable gulf separates the nature of those that may be to perish, from ours that are to live for ever. But their power of memory, we must believe, is not only capable of minutest retention, but also stretches back to afar —and some power or other they do possess, that gathers up the past experience into rules of conduct that guide them in their solitary or gregarious life. Why, therefore, should not the birds of Scotland know the Sabbath-day? On that day the Water-Ouzel is never disturbed by angler among the murmurs of his own waterfall; and, as he flits down the banks and braes of the burn, he sees no motion, he hears no sound about the cottage that is the boundary of his furthest flightfor "the dizzying mill-wheel rests." The merry-nodding rooks, that in spring-time keep following the very heels of the ploughman-may they not know it to be Sabbath, when all the horses are standing idle in the field, or taking a gallop by themselves round the head-rig? Quick of hearing are birds -one and all—and in every action of their lives are obedient to sounds. May they not, then-do they not connect a feeling of perfect safety with the tinkle of the small kirk-bell? The very jay himself is not shy of people on their way to worship. The magpie, that never sits more than a minute at a time in the same place on a Saturday, will on the Sabbath remain on the kirkyard wall with all the composure of a dove. The whole feathered creation know our hours of sleep. They awake before us; and ere the earliest labourer has said his prayers, have not the woods and valleys been ringing with their hymns? Why, therefore, may not they, who know, each week-day, the hour of our lying down and our rising up, know also the day of our general rest? The animals whose

lot is labour, shall they not know it? Yes; the horse on that day sleeps in shade or sunshine without fear of being disturbed his neck forgets the galling collar, "and there are forty feeding like one," all well knowing that their fresh meal on the tender herbage will not be broken in upon before the dews of next morning, ushering in a new day to them of toil or travel.

So much for our belief in the knowledge, instinctive or from a sort of reason, possessed by the creatures of the inferior creation of the heaven-appointed Sabbath to man and beast. But it is also true that we transfer our inward feelings to their outward condition, and with our religious spirit imbue all the ongoings of animated and even inanimated life. There is always a shade of melancholy, a tinge of pensiveness, a touch of pathos, in all profound rest. Perhaps because it is so much in contrast with the turmoil of our ordinary being. Perhaps because the soul, when undisturbed, will, from the impulse of its own divine nature, have high, solemn, and awful thoughts. In such state, it transmutes all things into a show of sympathy with itself. The church-spire, rising high above the smoke and stir of a town, when struck by the sun-fire, seems, on a market-day, a tall building in the air, that may serve as a guide to people from a distance flocking into the bazaars. The same church-spire, were its loud-tongued bell to call from aloft on the gathering multitude below, to celebrate the anniversary of some great victory, Waterloo or Trafalgar, would appear to stretch up its stature triumphantly into the skyso much the more triumphantly, if the standard of England were floating from its upper battlements. But to the devout eye of faith, doth it not seem to express its own character, when on the Sabbath it performs no other office than to point to heaven?

So much for the second solution. But independently of both, no wonder that all nature seems to rest on the Sabbath; for it doth rest-all of it, at least, that appertains to man and his condition. If the Fourth Commandment be kept at rest is all the household-and all the fields round it are at rest. Calm flows the current of human life, on that gracious day, throughout all the glens and valleys of Scotland, as a stream that wimples in the morning sunshine, freshened but not flooded with the soft-falling rain of a summer night. The