sprees, and not always
sleeping in their own nests at night.

As they approached the end of the jetty, they met a lad who had wounded
one of these large gulls called Tom Norries,--a beautiful creature, with
its fine lead-coloured wings and charming snow-white breast, and eye
like a diamond.

"I will give you a shilling for the bird," said Dewhurst.

"But what are you to do with it?" replied the lad. "I would not like it
to be killed. It is only hurt in the wing; and I will get half-a-crown
for it from one who has a garden to keep it in."

"No, no," said Dewhurst, "I'll not kill it. Here's your half-crown."

And the bargain was struck. Dewhurst, with the struggling bird in his
hand, went down, followed by his friends, one of the side stairs to the
stone rampart, by which the jetty is defended on the east. There they
sat down. The sun was throwing a blaze of glory over a sea which repaid
the gift with a liquid splendour scarcely inferior to his of fire; and
the companions of the bird, swirling in the clear air, seemed to be
attracted by the sharp cries of the prisoner; but all its efforts were
vain to gratify its love of liberty and their yearning. It was in the
hands of those who had neither pity for its sufferings, consideration
for the lessons it carried in its structure, nor taste for estimating
its beauties. One of another kind of students might have detected
adaptations in the structure of that creature sufficient to have raised
his thoughts to the great Author of design and the source of all
beauty,--that small and light body, capable of being suspended for a
great length of time in the air by those broad wings, so that, as a bird
of prey, it should watch for its food without the aid of a perch; the
feathers, supplied by an unctuous substance, to enable them to throw off
the water and keep the body dry; the web-feet for swimming; and the long
legs, which it uses as a kind of stay, by turning them towards the head
when it bends the neck, to apply the beak--that beak, too, so admirably
formed--for taking up entire, or perforating the backs of the silly
fishes that gambol too near the surface. Ay, even in these fishes,
which, venturing too far from their natural depths, and becoming amorous
of the sun, and playful in their escapades, he might see the symbol of
man himself, who, when he leaves the paths of prudence, and gets
top-light with pleasure, is ready, in every culmination of his delirium,
to be caught by