Then, oh then, to us will come,
To our cottage, to our home,
An amorous guest, who will salute
You from the chimney-top with flute-
like notes, when you least need the same:
To sing to you 'twill be on flame!
But, when the tedious winter's night
Comes on, that wants both heat and light,
And that his pretty music may

With pleasure pass the time away,

Which else, perhaps, might sadness bring-
Your guest is hoarse, and cannot sing.

Acquaintance so leaves man in misery
Who did adore him in prosperity.

There are four species of the hirundines that visit England; they arrive in the following order :-(1.) The chimney swallow (hirundo rustica) builds its nest generally in chimnies, in the inside, within a few feet of the top, or under the eaves of houses. (2.) The house martin (hirundo urbica), known by its white breast and black back, glossed with blue, visits us in great numbers. It builds under the eaves of houses, or close by the sides of the windows. This guest of summer,

The temple-haunting martlet does approve:
By his loved masonry, that the heav'ns breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty frieze,

Buttress, nor coigne of 'vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed
The air is delicate.

(3.) The sand martin (hirundo riparia) is the smallest of our swallows, as well as the least numerous of them. It frequents the steep, sandy banks, in the neighbourhood of rivers, in the sides of which it makes deep holes, and places the nest at the end. (4.) The swift (hirundo apus) is the largest species, measuring nearly eight inches in length. These birds

See Ellis's Specimens of Early English Poetry, vol. iii,

p. 25.7.

build their nests in lofty steeples and high towers, and sometimes under the arches of bridges.

The next bird which appears is that sweet warbler, the motacilla luscinia, or nightingale. Although the nightingale is common in this country, it never visits the northern parts of our island, and is but seldom seen in the western counties of Devonshire and Cornwall, or in Wales; though it annually visits Sweden. It leaves us sometime in the month of August, and makes its regular return in the beginning of April.

O nightingale! thou surely art
A creature of ebullient heart:

These notes of thine-they pierce and pierce;
Tumultuous harmony and fierce!
Thou sing'st as if the god of wine
Had helped thee to a valentine;
A song in mockery and despite

Of shades, and dews, and silent night;
And steady bliss, and all the loves
Now sleeping in these peaceful groves.

WORDSWORTH.

So various, sweet, and continued, are the notes of this bird, that the songs of other warblers, taken in their utmost extent, appear despicable when compared with those of the nightingale. His variety seems inexhaustible; for he never repeats the same notes, the same time, at least servilely; and, if the same bar be heard twice, it is always upon a different key, and with new embellishments. This great Coryphæus of the spring, as often as he prepares to conduct the hymn of Nature, begins by feeble, timid, and indecisive tones, as if to try his instrument. By degrees, he assumes more confidence, becomes gradually more warm and animated, till, at last, like the antient musicians, he captivates and overwhelms his audience by the full exertion of his astonishing powers.

In England, the nightingales frequent thick hedges and low coppices, and generally keep in the middle of the bush; so that they are very rarely seen.

They begin their song in the evening, and continue it the whole night. During the solemn stilness of night, every sound is heard with advantage, and has, amid darkness, a most powerful effect upon the imagination. Though the nightingale is a very small bird, his voice is heard farther than the human; being distinguished, in a calm night, at the distance of almost a mile all around the bush where he sits. This bird's fame for music is often fatal to its liberty. In order to secure its song, it is frequently made a prisoner; and the greatest part of what is written on the subject, is with a view to instruct its tyrants how to perpetuate its slavery.

O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray

Warblest at eve when all the woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.
Thy liquid notes that close the eve of day,

First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bills,
Portend success in love: O, if Jove's will
Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate

Foretel my hopeless doom in some grove nigh
As thou from year to year hast sung too late
For my relief, yet hadst no reason why:

Whether the Muse, or Love, call thee his mate,
Both them I serve, and of their train am I.

MILTON.

From the time of Homer (Od. T. 518) to the present day, the poets have ever considered the nightingale as a melancholy bird, and the tragic fable of Philomela still continues to be associated with this bird. Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, all concur in describing the nightingale's strains as fraught with melancholy. One instance from the latter will suffice:

On thee who build'st thy tuneful seat,
Protected by the leafy groves, I call,
O nightingale, thy accents ever sweet,
Their murmuring, melancholy, fall

Prolong; O come, and with thy plaintive strain
Aid me to utter my distress.

Thy woes, O Helen, let the song express,
And those of Troy, now levelled with the plain
By Grecian might.

POTTER.

Virgil, Horace, Catullus, and Ovid, follow the example of the Greek poets, and perpetuate this classical error, which pervades almost all the descriptions of the nightingale in the modern poets. Some of the early English poets, however, have delineated this songster from nature, rather than from the descriptions of the antients; Chaucer calls her note. 'merry;' and ISAAC WALTON, a writer of genuine feeling and classical simplicity, adds another testimony to the cheerful note of this bird: He, that at midnight, when the very labourers sleep securely, should hear, as I have heard, the clear air, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, "Lord! what music hast. thou provided for thy saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad men such music upon earth.'

Mr. Coleridge has vindicated the sprightliness of the nightingale's tones in a poem, rich in Miltonic harmony, and in the sensible imagery of nature.

All is still,

A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.

And hark! the nightingale begins its song,

• Most musical, most melancholy'' bird!

A melancholy bird? O idle thought!

In Nature there is nothing melancholy.

-But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,

Or slow distemper, or neglected love,

(And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself,

This line in Milton is not alluded to, with levity, by the poet; who justly observes, that, in Milton, it possesses an excellence far superior to that of mere description: it is spoken in the character of the melancholy man, and has therefore a dramatic propriety.

And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
Of his own sorrows), he, and such as he,
First named these notes a inelancholy strain;
And many a poet echoes the conceit,'
And youths and maidens most poetical,
Who lose the deep'ning twilights of the spring
In ball-rooms, and hot theatres, they still
Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs
O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.

My friend, and my friend's sister! we have learnt
A different lore: we may not thus profane
Nature's sweet voices always full of love
And joyance! 'Tis the merry nightingale
That crowds, and burries, and precipitates,
With fast thick warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul
Of all its music!

far and near,

In wood and thicket over the wide grove,
They answer and provoke each other's songs-
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical, and swift jug, jug,
And one low piping sound more sweet than all-
Stirring the air with such a harmony,

That, should you close your eyes, you might almost
Forget it was not day!

It is remarkable, that many of the highly gay and brilliant birds of America are destitute of the pleasing power of song, which is so peculiar a charm to the groves and fields of Europe; and THOMSON has beautifully expressed the supposed superiority of our island in this respect:

But, if she bids them shine,
Arrayed in all the beauteous beams of day,
Yet frugal still she humbles them in song.
Nor envy we the gaudy robes they lent
Proud Montezuma's realm, whose legions cast
A boundless radiance waving with the sun,
While Philomel is ours.

* See the whole of this poem in Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, vol. i, p. 90, 12mo. It is omitted in the last edition of Mr. W.'s Poems in 2 vols. 8vo.