of it, than of almost any other bird within the limits of settlement on the Continent. Now, the question, why is this? admits of many a sage answer; but I say it is simply because men have sold "their birth-right for the mess of pottage." They were born with the gift to know their angels, but, in their progressive obesity, they are worse than Abraham of old, and seldom make the mistake of entertaining them even in disguise. The clear seraphic vision of childhood, which once could see the halo and the folded wings, stares now through the dim medium of worldly grease and dust, upon what may seem a mystery or a monster. We are born in God and nature, and so long as we remain unvitiated, there is no such thing as mystery and fear-for love is our pure enlightener, and faith maketh sport of fear-but, as the world wags, the same child that could smile in confiding wonder amidst the rock of elemental war, and toy with the very bolts of heaven, as with its own rattle, would, as a man, tremble at a moon-thrown shadow, or faint if a donkey should bray of a sudden in the dark. The farther from birth the farther from nature, is almost a truism, and to the rheumy vision of age we owe the ghostly forms of superstition. As men become more and more besotted in the worship of the golden calf they have formed to themselves, so do the realities of beauty and harmony about them become as common and unclean-they cannot see them, neither can they hear--and then with dim and morbid yearnings for more exalted communion, they turn to the shadow realm of sickly dream, and "call up spirits from the vasty deep" of superstition, to minister to their craven appetites, and bring them the empty visions of a servile bliss. With the best of us, those voices which spoke to our young sense in lofty themes have lost their meaning, and now they seem wise indeed in their day and generation who can invoke even the echoes of that innocent time, and name them by holy names their comforters!

Who knows the little Wood Thrush for a comforter?and yet, ye children of mammon, it was the first sweet singer

that sang a cheering song from out the primeval forests here unto your fathers. The wolves had howled their greeting in chorus to the wintry winds, but the gentle salutation of the Wood Thrush came, the earliest harbinger of Spring and hope. Seeming as though the spirit of solitude that had so long infused those hoary aisles with harmony, of whispering boughs, now clothed its dædal hymn in voice most meet for human ear, and came in that plumed form to bid the weary wanderers welcome to the new empire nature yielded. What a welcome! Conquerors never found such. A melody that haunted every shade, and filled the ear of silence, where, deep within, she leaned upon her mossy couch to listentouched their rude hearts with its tender spell, and fired their souls with loftier daring; for that clear, loud and mellow minstrelsy was to them as the first fresh song of freedom on a new-found earth. Was not the little bird then a comforter to these, the hardy pioneers of freedom? Their stout souls found fittest inspiration in its real voice, for actual deeds that have lived after them in honor. Above the turmoil of their rough struggle with the elements, the savage beasts and more ferocious savages, that gentle song rose ever in its wild and sweet recall to win the soothed Passions back to peace and calm repose. Men, however stern and embittered by unceasing conflict, do not easily get away from the refining spell of music, and notes such as those of the Wood Thrush-that fill the common air like sun-beams-will search the clefts of these rugged natures as do those same sun-beams when they pierce ice-mailed cliffs to find the Alpine Rose hidden there, and glow in blushes on its tender cheek. There is a soft spot, even in the rough hunter's heart, and the enchantment of that song will reach it somewhere, in the drear, deep solitudes of pathless wilderness, all unaware, and then the warm tears welled up with his yearnings, will leave him humanized again-and is not the little bird a comforter to him?

Aye, and it has been the angel to the weary and way-far