its "bright, bright eyes," but every quick beat and pulsation of what Isaac Walton calls the "little instrumental throat." The exertion, however, is more conspicuous in the blackcap, when in garden or orchard it pours forth its mellow tunes. The throat is then distended with the gush of notes. And this intensity of feeling and effort is sometimes fatal. A thrush has been known to break a blood-vessel in the midst of its music, and drop lifeless from the tree. Nor is the story of the nightingale dying of sorrow, to be considered a mere fiction of the poets. One or two instances of its emulative combats with human musicians are sufficiently attested.

CLARE shall be our guide to the nightingale's nest, up this green woodland drive

She dwells just here.

Hush! let the wood-gate softly clap, for fear

The noise might drive her from her home of love;
For here I've heard her many a merry year,

At morn, at eve, nay, all the live-long day,
As though she lived on song. This very spot,
Just where that old-man's-beard all wildly trails
Rude arbours o'er the road, and stops the way;
And where the child its blue-bell flowers hath got,
Laughing and creeping through the mossy rails;
There have I hunted like a very boy,

Creeping on hands and knees through matted thorn,
To find her nest, and see her feed her young.
And where those crumpling fern-leaves ramp1 among
The hazel's under boughs, I've nestled down

And watch'd her while she sang.

Let's be hush;

For in this black-thorn clump, if rightly guessed,

Her curious house is hidden. Part aside

Those hazel branches in a gentle way,

And stoop right cautious 'neath the rustling boughs,

For we will have another search to-day,

And hunt this fern-strewn thorn-clump round and round,

And where this reeded wood-grass idly bows,

We'll wade right through.

1 Grow luxuriantly.

NIGHTINGALE'S NEST.

There, put that bramble by ;

Nay, trample on its branches, and get near.
How curious is the nest! no other bird
Uses such loose materials, or weaves

Its dwelling in such spots. Dead oaken leaves
Are placed without, and velvet moss within,
And little scraps of grass, and scant and spare,
What hardly seem materials, down and hair;
Snug lie her curious eggs, in number five,

Of deadened green, or rather olive brown,

And the old prickly thorn-bush guards them well.

27

It would be curious to trace the influence of climate upon the song. Addison, inviting young Lord Warwick into the country, speaks of a concert in the neighbouring wood begun by blackbirds and concluded by a nightingale, "with something of the Italian manner in her divisions." The English bird is supposed to possess, in a weaker degree, the continual warble," the linked sweetness long drawn out," of her southern rival. The Persian note is affirmed to be the sweetest. The eastern nightingale, or bulbul, is, indeed, of a distinct species, and nearly black; but the same tone is recognised under every change of sun and verdure. The traveller can say

Oft, where Spring

Display'd her richest blossoms among files
Of orange-trees bedeck'd with golden fruit
Ripe for the hand, or under a thick shade
Of Ilex, or, if better suited to the hour,
The lightsome olive's twinkling canopy,-
Oft have I heard the Nightingale and Thrush
Blending as in a common English grove

Their love songs.

It is worth remarking, that three lines of Homer comprise all the facts which later poets have enlarged with regard to the song and disposition of the nightingale. He mentions its custom of hiding itself in the deepest foliage, and marks that manysounding harmony which gives to its repetitions their highest

charm. The nightingale's peculiar love of wood-shelter is well expressed by Beaumont and Fletcher, who place it

Among the thick-leaved spring.

The nightingale's voice is singularly piercing, and can be heard over the diameter of a mile. Chaucer notices this characteristic:

Thomson makes

I heard in the next bush beside,
A nightingale so lustely sing,
That her clere voice she made ring
Through all the greene wood wide.

Wide around the woods

Sigh to her song, and with her wail resound.

Heber points out the same quality in the Indian relative:—

And what is she whose liquid strain
Thrills through yon copse of sugar-cane?

I know that soul-entrancing swell,—

It is, it must be, Philomel.

Sylvester among whose craggy recesses of wild fancy the youthful hand of Milton gathered a few sweet-smelling flowerspleasantly commends nightingales as the part-singers of the woodlands,

Thence thirty steps, amid the leafy sprays,

Another nightingale repeats her lays,

Just note for note, and adds some strain at last
That she had conned all the winter past.

It is curious to observe how resolutely, even by writers on natural history, the fabulous shyness of the bird is still maintained; but people, who live in the country have daily opportunities of correcting the error. Dwelling in the greenest and shadiest coppices, the nightingale often chooses a tree with scarcely a leaf, and, perched upon a slender twig, pours out

the choicest variations. It lives among the leaves, but continually sings in the gay sunshine.

Thomson's description of the bird finding her nest plundered and empty, and giving utterance to her grief, is only a poetic fiction, though beautifully imagined :

Oft when, returning with her loaded bill,
The astonished mother finds a vacant nest,
By the hard hand of unrelenting clowns,
Robb'd, to the ground the vain provision falls;
Her pinions ruffle, and, low-drooping, scarce
Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade,
Where all abandoned to despair, she sings
Her sorrows through the night.

The true account of the nightingale's song is given by the same poet, in speaking of birds in general, when copse, and tree, and flowering furze are spotted with nests:

The patient dam assiduous sits,

Not to be tempted from her tender task,

Or by sharp hunger, or by smooth delight,

Though the whole loosened Spring around her blows;

Her sympathising lover takes his stand

High on th' opponent bank, and ceaseless sings
The tedious time away.

Among singing birds, the nightingale is unrivalled in the power of sustaining a note, but is surpassed in volume and compass of sound by the Campanero, or Bell-bird. In the silence of a SouthAmerican or African night, it begins to toll; continuing its one lonely cry at intervals of a minute. This toll, with its measured mournfulness, is clearly heard at a distance of three miles. The nightingale despises monotony. Its song has sixteen different burdens, the same passage being never reproduced without some change or embellishment. This variegated harmony is described by a French poet, R. Belleau, who lived in the middle of the sixteenth century, and, for the sweet touches of his landscapes was called the Painter of Nature.