CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. those creatures nibble the wild-flowers, became | and soiled it with the ashes of repentance- walking with her eyes on the ground as she again entered the kirk-yet not fearing to lift them up to heaven during the prayer. Her sadness inspired a general pity-she was excluded from no house she had heart to visitno coarse comment, no ribald jest accompanied the notice people took of her baby-no There had been trouble and agitation, much licentious rustic presumed on her frailty; for sobbing and many tears, among the multitude, the pale, melancholy face of the nursing while the mother was scaling the cliffs-sub- mother, weeping as she sung the lullaby, lime was the shout that echoed afar the mo- forbade all such approach-and an universal ment she reached the eyrie-then had suc- sentiment of indignation drove from the parish ceeded a silence deep as death-in a little the heartless and unprincipled seducer-if all while arose that hymning prayer, succeeded had been known, too weak word for his crime by mute supplication-the wildness of thank--who left thus to pine in sorrow, and in ful and congratulatory joy had next its sway-shame far worse than sorrow, one who till her and now that her salvation was sure, the great unhappy fall had been held up by every crowd rustled like a wind-swept wood. And mother as an example to her daughters. for whose sake was all this alternation of agony? A poor humble creature, unknown to many even by name-one who had had but few friends, nor wished for more-contented to work all day, here-there-anywhere-that she might be able to support her aged mother and her child-and who on Sabbath took her seat in an obscure pew, set apart for paupers, in the kirk. Never had she striven to cease to love her betrayer-but she had striven-and an appeased conscience had enabled her to do soto think not of him now that he had deserted Sometimes his image, as well her for ever. in love as in wrath, passed before the eye of her heart-but she closed it in tears of blood, and the phantom disappeared. Thus all the love towards him that slept-but was not dead "Fall back, and give her fresh air," said the-arose in yearnings of still more exceeding old minister of the parish; and the ring of close faces widened round her lying as in death. "Gie me the bonny bit bairn into my arms," cried first one mother and then another, and it was tenderly handed round the circle of kisses, many of the snooded maidens bathing its face in tears. "There's no a single scratch about the puir innocent, for the Eagle, you see, maun hae struck its talons into the lang claes and the shawl. Blin', blin' maun they be who see not the finger o' God in this thing!" love towards her child. Round its head was gathered all hope of comfort-of peace-of reward of her repentance. One of its smiles was enough to brighten up the darkness of a whole day. In her breast-on her knee-in its cradle, she regarded it with a perpetual prayer. And this feeling it was, with all the overwhelming tenderness of affection, all the invigorating power of passion, that, under the hand of God, bore her up and down that fearful mountain's brow, and after the hour of rescue and Hannah started up from her swoon-and, deliverance, stretched her on the greensward looking wildly round cried, "Oh! the Bird-like a corpse. he Bird!-the Eagle-the Eagle!-The Eagle has carried off my bonny wee Walter-is there nane to pursue ?" A neighbour put her baby into her breast; and shutting her eyes, and smiting her forehead, the sorely bewildered creature said in a low voice," Am I waukenoh! tell me if I'm wauken-or if a' this be but the wark o' a fever." The rumour of the miracle circled the mountain's base, and a strange story without Anxious names had been told to the Wood-ranger of the Cairn-Forest, by a wayfaring man. to know what truth there was in it, he crossed the hill, and making his way through the sullen crowd, went up to the eminence, and beheld her whom he had so wickedly ruined, and so basely deserted. Hisses, and groans, and hootings, and fierce eyes, and clenched hands assailed and threatened him on every side. be! Hannah Lamond was not yet twenty years old, and although she was a mother-and you may guess what a mother-yet-frown not, fair and gentle reader-frown not, pure and His heart died within him, not in fear, but stainless as thou art-to her belonged not the What a worm he felt himself to sacred name of wife-and that baby was the in remorse. And fain would he have become a worm, child of sin and shame-yes-" the child of misery, baptized in tears!" She had loved that, to escape all that united human scorn, he trusted-been betrayed-and deserted. In sor- might have wriggled away in slime into some row and solitude-uncomforted and despised-hole of the earth. But the meek eye of Hanshe bore her burden. Dismal had been the hour of travail-and she feared her mother's heart would have broken, even when her own was cleft in twain. But how healing is forgiveness-alike to the wounds of the forgiving And then Hannah knew and the forgiven! that, although guilty before God, her guilt was not such as her fellow-creatures deemed itfor there were dreadful secrets which should never pass her lips against the father of her child. So she bowed down her young head, nah met his in forgiveness—an un-upbraiding T 2 proclaim that innocence. I deserve death, and I am willing here, on this spot, to deliver myself into the hands of justice. Allan Calder -I call on you to seize your prisoner." twenty-four hours' purchase. Never was there a single hound in all Lord Darlington's packs, since his lordship became a mighty hunter, with nostrils so fine as those of that feathered The moral sense of the people, when in- fiend, covered though they be with strong hairs structed by knowledge and enlightened by re- or bristles, that grimly adorn a bill of formiligion, what else is it but the voice of God! dable dimensions, and apt for digging out eyeTheir anger subsided into a stern satisfaction socket and splitting skull-suture of dying man -and that soon softened, in sight of her who, or beast. That bill cannot tear in pieces like alone aggrieved, alone felt nothing but forgive- the eagle's beak, nor are its talons so powerful ness, into a confused compassion for the man to smite as to compress-but a better bill for who, bold and bad as he had been, had under-cut-and-thrust-push, carte, and tierce-the gone many solitary torments, and nearly fallen dig dismal and the plunge profound-belongs in his uncompanioned misery into the power to no other bird. It inflicts great gashes; nor of the Prince of Darkness. The old clergy- needs the wound to be repeated on the same man, whom all reverenced, put the contrite spot. Feeder foul and obscene! to thy nostril man's hand in hers, whom he swore to love upturned "into the murky air, sagacious of and cherish all his days. And, ere summer thy quarry from afar," sweeter is the scent of was over, Hannah was the mistress of a fami- carrion, than to the panting lover's sense and ly, in a house not much inferior to a Manse. soul the fragrance of his own virgin's breath Her mother, now that not only her daughter's and bosom, when, lying in her innocence in reputation was freed from stain, but her inno- his arms, her dishevelled tresses seem laden cence also proved, renewed her youth. And with something more ethereally pure than although the worthy schoolmaster, who told "Sabean odours from the spicy shores of us the tale so much better than we have been Araby the Blest." able to repeat it, confessed that the woodranger never became altogether a saint-nor acquired the edifying habit of pulling down the corners of his mouth, and turning up the whites of his eyes-yet he assured us, that he never afterwards heard any thing very seriously to his prejudice-that he became in due time an elder of the kirk-gave his children a religious education-erring only in making rather too much of a pet of his eldest born, whom, even when grown up to manhood, he never called by any other name than the Eaglet. THIRD CANTICLE. The Raven dislikes all animal food that has not a deathy smack. It cannot be thought that he has any reverence or awe of the mystery of life. Neither is he a coward; at least, not such a coward as to fear the dying kick of a lamb or sheep. Yet so long as his victim can stand, or sit, or lie in a strong struggle, the raven keeps aloof-hopping in a circle that narrows and narrows as the sick animal's nostrils keep dilating in convulsions, and its eyes grow dimmer and more dim. When the prey is in the last agonies, croaking, he leaps upon the breathing carcass, and whets his bill upon his own blue-ringed legs, steadied by claws in the fleece, yet not so fiercely inserted as to get entangled and fast. With his large level-crowned head bobbing up and down, and THE RAVEN! In a solitary glen sits down on turned a little first to one side and then to ana stone the roaming pedestrian, beneath the other, all the while a self-congratulatory leer hush and gloom of a thundery sky that has in his eye, he unfolds his wings, and then folds not yet begun to growl, and hears no sounds them again, twenty or thirty times, as if dubibut that of an occasional big rain-drop plash-ous how to begin to gratify his lust of blood; ing on the bare bent; the crag high overhead and frequently, when just on the brink of consometimes utters a sullen groan-the pilgrim, summation, jumps off side, back, or throat, starting, listens, and the noise is repeated, but instead of a groan, a croak-croak-croak! manifestly from a thing with life. A pause of silence! and hollower and hoarser the croak is heard from the opposite side of the glen. Eyeing the black sultry heaven, he feels the warm plash on his face, but sees no bird on the wing. By and by, something black lifts itself slowly and heavily up from a precipice, in deep shadow; and before it has cleared the rock-range, and entered the upper region of air, he knows it to be a Raven. The creature seems wroth to be disturbed in his solitude, and in his strong straight-forward flight The Raven, it is thought, is in the habit of aims at the head of another glen; but he living upwards of a hundred years, perhaps a wheels round at the iron barrier, and, alight- couple of centuries. Children grow into girls, ing among the heather, folds his huge massy girls into maidens, maidens into wives, wives wings, and leaps about as if in anger, with into widows, widows into old decrepit crones, the same savage croak-croak-croak! No and crones into dust; and the Raven who other bird so like a demon-and should you chance to break a leg in the desert, and be unable to crawl to a hut, your life is not worth and goes dallying about, round and round, and off to a small safe distance, scenting, almost snorting, the smell of the blood running cold, colder, and more cold. At last the poor wretch is still; and then, without waiting till it is stiff, he goes to work earnestly and passionately, and taught by horrid instinct how to reach the entrails, revels in obscene gluttony, and preserves, it may be, eye, lip, palate, and brain, for the last course of his meal, gorged to the throat, incapacitated to return thanks, and with difficulty able either to croak or to fly. wons at the head of the glen, is aware of all the births, baptisms, marriages, death-beds, and funerals. Certain it is at least so men insheathed! First a drab duffle cloak-then a drab wraprascal-then a drab broad-cloth coat, made in the oldest fashion-then a drab waistcoat of the same-then a drab under-waistcoat of thinner mould-then a linen-shirt, somewhat drabbish-then a flannel-shirt, entirely so, and most odorous to the nostrils of the members of the Red Tarn Club. All this must have taken a couple of days at the least; so, supposing the majority of members assembled about eight A. M. on the Sabbath morning, it must have been well on to twelve o'clock on Monday night before the club could have com say that he is aware of the death-beds and the funerals. Often does he flap his wings against door and window of hut,, when the wretch within is in extremity, or, sitting on the heather-roof, croaks horror into the dying dream. As the funeral winds its way towards the mountain cemetery he hovers aloft in the air-or, swooping down nearer to the bier, precedes the corpse like a sable sauley. While the party of friends are carousing in the house of death, he, too, scorning funeralbaked meats, croaks hoarse hymns and dismal dirges as he is devouring the pet-lamb of the little grandchild of the deceased. The shep-fortably sat down to supper. During these two herds maintain that the Raven is sometimes heard to laugh. Why not, as well as the hyena? Then it is that he is most diabolical, for he knows that his laughter is prophetic of human death. True it is, and it would be injustice to conceal the fact, much more to deny it, that Ravens of old fed Elijah; but that was the punishment of some old sin committed by Two who before the Flood bore the human shape, and who, soon as the ark rested on Mount Ararat, flew off to the desolation of swamped forests and the disfigured solitude of the drowned glens. Dying Ravens hide themselves from daylight in burial-places among the rocks, and are seen hobbling into their tombs, as if driven order!-Chair!-chair!"-must have been thither by a flock of fears, and crouching under a remorse that disturbs instinct, even as if it were conscience. So sings and says the Celtic superstition-muttered to us in a dream-adding that there are Raven ghosts, great black bundles of feathers, for ever in the forest, night-hunting in famine for prey, emitting a last feeble croak at the blush of dawn, and then all at once invisible. denuding days, we can well believe that the President must have been hard put to it to keep the secretary, treasurer, chaplain, and other officebearers, ordinary and extraordinary members, from giving a sly dig at Obadiah's face, so tempting in the sallow hue and rank smell of first corruption. Dead bodies keep well in frost; but the subject had in this case probably fallen from a great height, had his bones broken to smash, his flesh bruised and mangled. The President, therefore, we repeat it, even though a raven of great age and authority, must have had inconceivable difficulty in controlling the Club. The croak of "Order!— frequent; and had the office not been hereditary, the old gentleman would no doubt have thrown it up, and declared the chair vacant. All obstacles and obstructions having been by indefatigable activity removed, no attempt, we may well believe, was made by the seneschal to place the guests according to their rank, above or below the salt, and the party sat promiscuously down to a late supper. Not a word was uttered during the first half hour, till a queer-looking mortal, who had spent several years of his prime. of birdhood at old Calgarth, and picked up a tolerable command of the Westmoreland dialect by means of the Hamiltonian system, exclaimed, "I'se weel nee brussen-there be's Mister Wudsworth-Ho, ho, ho!" It was indeed the bard, benighted in the Excursion from Patterdale to Jobson's Cherry-Tree; and the Red Tarn Club, afraid of having their orgies put into blank verse, sailed away in floating fragments beneath the moon and stars. There can be no doubt that that foolish Quaker, who some twenty years ago perished at the foot of a crag near Red Tarn, "far in the bosom of Helvyllyn," was devoured by ravens. We call him foolish, because no adherent of that sect was ever qualified to find his way among mountains when the day was shortish, and the snow, if not very deep, yet wreathed and pit-falled. In such season and weather, no place so fit for a Quaker as the fireside. Not to insist, however, on that point, with what glee the few hungry and thirsty old Ravens belonging to the Red Tarn Club must But over the doom of one true Lover of Nahave flocked to the Ordinary! Without ask-ture let us shed a flood of rueful tears; for at ing each other to which part this, that, or the other croaker chose to be helped, the maxim which regulated their behaviour at table was doubtless, "First come, first served." Forthwith each bill was busy, and the scene became animated in the extreme. There must have been great difficulty to the most accomplished of the carrion in stripping the Quaker of his drab. The broad-brim had probably escaped with the first intention, and after going before the wind half across the unfrozen Tarn, capsized, filled, and sunk. Picture to yourself so many devils, all in glossy black feather coats and dark breeches, with waistcoats inclining to blue, pully-hawlying away at the unresisting figure of the follower of Fox, and getting first vexed and then irritated with the pieces of choking soft armour in which, five or six ply thick, his inviting carcass was so provokingly what tale shall mortal man weep, if not at the tale of youthful genius and virtue shrouded suddenly in a winding-sheet wreathed of snow by the pitiless tempest! Elate in the joy of solitude, he hurried like a fast travelling shadow into the silence of the frozen mountains, all beautifully encrusted with pearls, and jewels, and diamonds, beneath the resplendent nightheavens. The din of populous cities had long stunned his brain, and his soul had sickened in the presence of the money-hunting eyes of selfish men, all madly pursuing their multifarious machinations in the great mart of commerce. The very sheeted masts of ships, bearing the flags of foreign countries, in all their pomp and beauty sailing homeward or outward-bound, had become hateful to his spirit-for what were they but the floating enginery of Mammon? Truth, integrity honour, were all recklessly sacrificed to gain by the stretched away in all directions through among friends he loved and had respected most-sa- the mountains to distant vales. No more fear crificed without shame and without remorse or thought had he of being lost in the wilder -repentance being with them a repentance ness, than the ring-dove that flies from forest only over ill-laid schemes of villany-plans for the ruination of widows and orphans, blasted in the bud of their iniquity. The bro ther of his bosom made him a bankrupt-and for a year the jointure of his widow-mother was unpaid. But she died before the second Christmas-and he was left alone in the world. Poor indeed he was, but not a beggar. A legacy came to him from a distant relation-almost the only one of his name-who died abroad. Small as it was, it was enough to live on-and his enthusiastic spirit gathering joy from distress, vowed to dedicate itself in some profound solitude to the love of Nature, and the study of her Great Laws. He bade an eternal farewell to cities at the dead of midnight, beside his mother's grave, scarcely distinguishable among the thousand flat stones, sunk, or sinking into the wide churchyard, along which a great thoroughfare of life roared like the sea. And now, for the first time, his sorrow flung from him like a useless garment, he found himself alone among the Cumbrian mountains, and impelled in strong idolatry almost to kneel down and worship the divine beauty of the moon, and "stars that are the poetry of heaven." Not uninstructed was the wanderer in the lore that links the human heart to the gracious form and aspects of the Mighty Mother. In early youth he had been intended for the Church, and subsequent years of ungrateful and ungenial toils had not extinguished the fine scholarship that native aptitude for learning had acquired in the humble school of the village in which he was born. He had been ripe for College when the sudden death of his father, who had long been at the head of a great mercantile concern, imposed it upon him, as a sacred duty owed to his mother and sisters, to embark in trade. Not otherwise could he hope ever to retrieve their fortunes-and for ten years for their sake he was a slave, till ruin set him free. Now he was master of his own destiny-and sought some humble hut in that magnificent scenery, where he might pass a blameless life, and among earth's purest joys prepare his soul for heaven. Many such humble huts had he seen during that one bold, bright, beautiful spring-winter day. Each wreath of smoke from the breathing chimneys, while the huts themselves seemed hardly awakened from sleep in the morning-calm, led his imagination up into the profound peace of the sky. In any one of those dwellings, peeping from sheltered dells, or perched on windswept eminences, could he have taken up his abode, and sat down contented at the board of their simple inmates. But in the very delirium of a new bliss, the day faded before him-twilight looked lovelier than dream-land in the reflected glimmer of the snow-and thus had midnight found him, in a place so utterly lonesome in its remoteness from all habitations, that even in summer no stranger sought it without the guidance of some shepherd familiar with the many bewildering passes that to forest in the winter season, and, without the aid even of vision, trusts to the instinctive wafting of her wings through the paths of ether. As he continued gazing on the heavens, the moon all at once lost something of her brightness-the stars seemed fewer in number-and the lustre of the rest as by mist obscured. The blue ethereal frame grew discoloured with streaks of red and yellow-and a sort of dim darkness deepened and deepened on the air, while the mountains appeared higher, and at the same time further off, as if he had been transported in a dream to another region of the earth. A sound was heard, made up of farmustering winds, echoes from caves, swinging of trees, and the murmur as of a great lake or sea beginning to break on the shore. A few flakes of snow touched his face, and the air grew cold. A clear tarn had a few minutes before glittered with moonbeams, but now it had disappeared. Sleet came thicker and faster, and ere long it was a storm of snow. “O God! my last hour is come!" and scarcely did he hear his own voice in the roaring tempest. Men have died in dungeons-and their skele tons been found long years afterwards lying on the stone floor, in postures that told through what hideous agonies they had passed into the world of spirits. But no eye saw, nor ear heard, and the prison-visitor gathers up, as he shudders, but a dim conviction of some long horror from the bones. One day in spring, long after the snows were melted-except here and there a patch like a flock of sheep on some sunless exposure-a huge Raven rose heavily, as if gorged with prey, before the feet of a shepherd, who, going forward to the spot where the bird had been feeding, beheld a rotting corpse! A dog, itself almost a skeleton, was lying near, and began to whine at his approach. On its collar was the name of its master-a name unknown in that part of the country-and weeks elapsed before any person could be heard of that could tell the history of the suf ferer. A stranger came and went-taking the faithful creature with him that had so long watched by the dead-but long before his arrival the remains had been interred; and you may see the grave, a little way on from the south gate, on your right hand as you enter, not many yards from the Great Yew-Tree in the churchyard of - not far from the foot of Ullswater. Gentle reader! we have given you two ver sions of the same story-and pray, which do you like the best? The first is the most funny, the second the most affecting. We have observed that the critics are not decided on the question of our merits as a writer; some maintaining that we are strongest in humourothers, that our power is in pathos. The judicious declare that our forte lies in both-in the two united, or alternating with each other. "But is it not quite shocking," exclaims some scribbler who has been knouted in Ebony, "to hear so very serious an affair as the death of a Quaker in the snow among mountains, treated with such heartless levity? The man who melancholy—not a drunkard—not blind-not stupid; as much as it would be prudent to say of any man, whether editor or contributor, in her Majesty's dominions. We really have no patience with people who persist in all manner of misconceptions regarding the character of birds. Birds often appear to such persons, judging from, of, and by themselves, to be in mind and manners the reverse of their real character. They judge the inner bird by outward circumstances inaccurately observed. There is the owl. How little do the people of England know of himeven of him the barn-door and domestic owlyea, even at this day-we had almost said the Poets! Shakspeare, of course, and his freres, knew him to be a merry fellow-quite a madcap-and so do now all the Lakers. But Cowper had his doubts about it; and Gray, as every schoolboy knows, speaks of him like an old wife. The force of folly can go no further, than to imagine an owl complaining to the moon of being disturbed by people walking in a country churchyard. And among all our present bardlings, the owl is supposed to be constantly on the eve of suicide. If it were really so, he ought in a Christian country to be pitied, not pelted, as he is sure to be when accidentally seen in sunlight-for melancholy is a misfortune, especially when hereditary and constitutional, as it is popularly believed to be in the Black-billed Bubo, and certainly was in Dr. Johnson. In young masters and misses we can pardon any childishness; but we cannot pardon the antipathy to the owl entertained by the manly minds of grown-up English clodPeople ignorant of Ornithology will stare hoppers, ploughmen, and threshers. They keep like the Bird of Wisdom himself on being told terriers to kill rats and mice in barns, and they that an Owl is an Eagle. Yet, bating a little shoot the owls, any one of whom we would inaccuracy, it is so. Eagles, kites, hawks, and cheerfully back against the famous Billy. "The owls, all belong to the genus Falco. We hear very commonest observation teaches us," says a great deal too much in poetry of the moping the author of the "Gardens of the Menagerie," Owl, the melancholy Owl, the boding Owl, "that they are in reality the best and most effiwhereas he neither mopes nor bodes, and is cient protectors of our cornfields and granano more melancholy than becomes a gentle- ries from the devastating pillage of the swarms man. We also hear of the Owl being addicted of mice and other small rodents." Nay, by their to spirituous liquors; and hence the expres- constant destruction of these petty but dangersion, as drunk as an Owl. All this is mere ous enemies, the owls, he says, “earn an unWhig personality, the Owl being a Tory of the questionable title to be regarded as among the old school, and a friend of the ancient estab-most active of the friends of man; a title which lishments of church and state. Nay, the same only one or two among them occasionally forpolitical party, although certainly the most feit by their aggressions on the defenceless short-sighted of God's creatures, taunt the Owl poultry." Roger or Dolly beholds him in the with being blind. As blind as an Owl is a act of murdering a duckling, and, like other libel in frequent use out of ornithological so-light-headed, giddy, unthinking creatures, they ciety. Shut up Lord Jeffrey himself in a haybarn with a well-built mow, and ask him in the darkness to catch you a few mice, and he will tell you whether or not the Owl be blind. This would be just as fair as to expect the Owl to see, like Lord Jeffrey, through a case in the Parliament House during daylight. Nay, we once heard a writer in Taylor and Hessey call the Owl stupid, he himself having longer ears than any species of Owl extant. What is the positive character of the Owl may perhaps appear by and by; but we have seen that, describing his character by negations, we may say that, he resembles Napoleon Bonaparte much more than Joseph Hume or Alderman Wood. He is not moping-not boding-not forget all the service he has done the farm, the parish, and the state; he is shot in the act, and nailed, wide-extended in cruel spread-eagle, on the barn-door. Others again call him dull and short-sighted-nay, go the length of asserting that he is stupid-as stupid as an owl. Why, our excellent fellow, when you have the tithe of the talent of the common owl, and know half as well how to use it, you may claim the medal. The eagles, kites, and hawks, hunt by day. The Owl is the Nimrod of the Night. Then, like one who shall be nameless, he sails about seeking those whom he may devour. To do him justice, he has a truly ghost-like head and shoulders of his own. What horror to the |