ice, kept shut for their sakes, or half-opened by fair hands of
virgins whose eyes gladden with heart-born brightness as each morning
they mark the growing beauty of the brood, till they smile to see one
almost as large as its parent sitting on the rim of the nest, when all
at once it hops over, and, as it flutters away like a leaf, seems
surprised that it can fly!

Yet there are still a few wretched quacks among us whom we may some day
perhaps drive down into the dirt. There are idiots who will not even
suffer sheep, cows, horses, and dogs, to escape the disgusting
perversions of their anile anecdotage--who, by all manner of drivelling
lies, libel even the common domestic fowl, and impair the reputation of
the bantam. Newspapers are sometimes so infested by the trivial trash,
that in the nostrils of a naturalist they smell on the breakfast-table
like rotten eggs; and there are absolutely volumes of the slaver bound
in linen, and lettered with the names of the expectorators on the
outside, resembling annuals--we almost fear with prints. In such hands,
the ass loses his natural attributes, and takes the character of his
owner; and as the anecdote-monger is seen astride on his cuddy, you
wonder what may be the meaning of the apparition, for we defy you to
distinguish the one donk from the other, the rider from the ridden,
except by the more inexpressive countenance of the one, and the ears of
the other in uncomputed longitude dangling or erect.

We can bear this libellous gossip least patiently of all with birds. If
a ninny have some stories about a wonderful goose, let him out with
them, and then waddle away with his fat friend into the stackyard--where
they may take sweet counsel together in the "fause-house." Let him, with
open mouth and grozet eyes, say what he chooses of "Pretty Poll," as she
clings in her cage, by beak or claws, to stick or wire, and in her
naughty vocabulary let him hear the impassioned eloquence of an Aspasia
inspiring a Pericles. But, unless his crown itch for the Crutch, let him
spare the linnet on the briery bush among the broom--the laverock on the
dewy braird or in the rosy cloud--the swan on her shadow--the eagle in
his eyrie, in the sun, or at sea.

The great ornithologists and the true are the authorities that are
constantly correcting those errors of popular opinion about the fowls of
the air, which in every country, contrary to the evidence of the senses,
and in spite of observations t