ious beatitude as no other
sound in nature does. It is perhaps more of an evening than a morning
hymn, though I hear it at all hours of the day. It is very simple, and I
can hardly tell the secret of its charm. "O spheral, spheral!" he seems
to say; "O holy, holy! O clear away, clear away! O clear up, clear up!"
interspersed with the finest trills and the most delicate preludes. It
is not a proud, gorgeous strain, like the Tanager's or the Grosbeak's;
suggests no passion or emotion,--nothing personal,--but seems to be the
voice of that calm, sweet solemnity one attains to in his best moments.
It realizes a peace and a deep, solemn joy that only the finest souls
may know. A few nights ago I ascended a mountain to see the world by
moonlight; and when near the summit the Hermit commenced his evening
hymn a few rods from me. Listening to this strain on the lone mountain,
with the full moon just rounded from the horizon, the pomp of your
cities and the pride of your civilization seemed trivial and cheap.

Whether it is because of their rareness, or an accident of my
observation, or a characteristic trait, I cannot tell, yet I have never
known two of these birds to be singing at the same time in the same
locality, rivalling each other, like the Wood-Thrush or the Veery.
Shooting one from a tree, I have observed another take up the strain
from almost the identical perch in less than ten minutes afterward.
Later in the day, when I had penetrated the heart of the old
Barkpeeling, I came suddenly upon one singing from a low stump, and for
a wonder he did not seem alarmed, but lifted up his divine voice as if
his privacy was undisturbed. I open his beak and find the inside yellow
as gold. I was prepared to find it inlaid with pearls and diamonds, or
to see an angel issue from it.

He is not much in the books. Indeed, I am acquainted with scarcely any
writer on ornithology whose head is not muddled on the subject of our
three prevailing song-thrushes, confounding either their figures or
their songs. A writer in the Atlantic[A] gravely tells us the
Wood-Thrush is sometimes called the Hermit, and then, after describing
the song of the Hermit with great beauty and correctness, coolly
ascribes it to the Veery! The new Cyclopaedia, fresh from the study of
Audubon, says the Hermit's song consists of a single plaintive note, and
that the Veery's resembles that of the Wood-Thrush! These observations
deserve to be preserved with that of th