Vireo's, is that of the Solitary Warbling Vireo,--a bird
slightly larger, much rarer, and with a louder, less cheerful and happy
strain. I see him hopping along lengthwise of the limbs, and note the
orange tinge of his breast and sides and the white circle around his
eye.

But the declining sun and the deepening shadows admonish me that this
ramble must be brought to a close, even though only the leading
characters in this chorus of forty songsters have been described, and
only a small portion of the venerable old woods explored. In a secluded
swampy corner of the old Barkpeeling, where I find the great purple
orchis in bloom, and where the foot of man or beast seems never to have
trod, I linger long, contemplating the wonderful display of lichens and
mosses that overrun both the smaller and the larger growths. Every bush
and branch and sprig is dressed up in the most rich and fantastic of
liveries; and, crowning all, the long bearded moss festoons the branches
or sways gracefully from the limbs. Every twig looks a century old,
though green leaves tip the end of it. A young yellow birch has a
venerable, patriarchal look, and seems ill at ease under such premature
honors. A decayed hemlock is draped as if by hands for some solemn
festival.

Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently as the hush and
stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest
hour of the day. And as the Hermit's evening hymn goes up from the deep
solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment of
which music, literature, and religion are but the faint types and
symbols.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] For December, 1858.

LAST DAYS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

PART III.

CONCLUSION.

Landor has frequently been ridiculed for insisting upon an orthography
peculiar at present to himself, and this ridicule has been bestowed most
mercilessly, because of the supposition that he was bent upon
revolutionizing the English language merely for the sake of singularity.
But Landor has logic on his side, and it would be wise to heed
authoritative protests against senseless innovations that bid fair to
destroy the symmetry of words, and which, fifty years hence, will render
the tracing of their derivation an Herculean task, unless Trenches
multiply in proportion to the necessities of the times. If I ever wished
the old lion to put forth all the majesty of his indignation, I had only
to whisper the cabalistic wor