woods! To shoot thee there--would
be as impious as to have killed a sacred Ibis stalking in the shade of
an Egyptian temple. Yet it is fortunate for thee--folded up there, as
thou art, as motionless as thy sitting-stone--that at this moment we
have no firearms--for we had heard of a fish-like trout in that very
pool, and this--O Heron--is no gun but a rod. Thou believest thyself to
be in utter solitude--no sportsman but thyself in the chasm--for the
otter, thou knowest, loves not such very rocky rivers; and fish with
bitten shoulder seldom lies here--that epicure's tasted prey. Yet within
ten yards of thee lies couched thy enemy, who once had a design upon
thee, even in the very egg. Our mental soliloquy disturbs not thy
watchful sense--for the air stirs not when the soul thinks, or feels, or
fancies about man, bird, or beast. We feel, O Heron! that there is not
only humanity--but poetry, in our being. Imagination haunts and
possesses us in our pastimes, colouring them even with serious, solemn,
and sacred light--and thou assuredly hast something priest-like and
ancient in thy look--and about thy light-blue plume robes, which the
very elements admire and reverence--the waters wetting them not--nor the
winds ruffling--and moreover we love thee--Heron--for the sake of that
old castle, beside whose gloom thou utteredst thy first feeble cry! A
Ruin nameless, traditionless--sole, undisputed property of Oblivion!

Hurra!--Heron--hurra! why, that was an awkward tumble--and very nearly
had we hold of thee by the tail! Didst thou take us for a water-kelpie?
A fright like that is enough to leave thee an idiot all the rest of thy
life. 'Tis a wonder thou didst not go into fits--but thy nerves must be
sorely shaken--and what an account of this adventure will certainly be
shrieked unto thy mate, to the music of the creaking boughs! Not, even
wert thou a secular bird of ages, wouldst thou ever once again revisit
this dreadful place. For fear has a wondrous memory in all dumb
creatures--and rather wouldst thou see thy nest die of famine, than
seek for fish in this man-monster-haunted pool. Farewell! farewell!

Many are the hundreds of hill and mountain lochs to us as familiarly
known, round all their rushy or rocky margins, as that pond there in the
garden of Buchanan Lodge. That pond has but one goose and one gander,
and nine goslings--about half-a-dozen trouts, if indeed they have not
sickened and died of Nostalgia, missing in the s