ushing tears. But Duty, "stern daughter of the
voice of God," dooms us to breathe our morning and evening orisons far
from hearing and sight of Thee, whose music and whose light continue
gladdening other ears and other eyes--as if ours had there never
listened--and never gazed. As if thy worshipper--and sun! moon! and
stars! he asks ye if he loved not you and your images--as if thy
worshipper--O Windermere! were--dead! And does duty dispense no reward
to them who sacrifice at her bidding what was once the very soul of
life? Yes! an exceeding great reward--ample as the heart's desire--for
contentment is borne of obedience--where no repinings are, the wings of
thought are imped beyond the power of the eagle's plumes; and happy are
we now--with the human smiles and voices we love even more than thine,
thou fairest region of nature! happier than when we rippled in our
pinnace through the billowy moonlight--than when we sat alone on the
mountain within the thunder-cloud.

Why do the songs of the Blackbird and Thrush make us think of the
songless STARLING? It matters not. We do think of him, and see him
too--a lovable bird, and his abode is majestic. What an object of wonder
and awe is an old Castle to a boyish imagination! Its height how
dreadful! up to whose mouldering edges his fear carries him, and hangs
him over the battlements! What beauty in those unapproachable wall
flowers, that cast a brightness on the old brown stones of the edifice,
and make the horror pleasing! That sound so far below, is the sound of a
stream the eye cannot reach--of a waterfall echoing for ever among the
black rocks and pools. The schoolboy knows but little of the history of
the old Castle--but that little is of war, and witchcraft, and
imprisonment, and bloodshed. The ghostly glimmer of antiquity appals
him--he visits the ruin only with a companion, and at midday. There and
then it was that we first saw a Starling. We heard something wild and
wonderful in their harsh scream, as they sat upon the edge of the
battlements, or flew out of the chinks and crannies. There were Martens
too, so different in their looks from the pretty
House-Swallows--Jack-daws clamouring afresh at every time we waved our
caps, or vainly slung a pebble towards their nests--and one grove of
elms, to whose top, much lower than the castle, came, ever and anon,
some noiseless Heron from the Muirs.

Ruins! Among all the external objects of imagination, surely they are
most