r--gone, too, for ever art
thou, our beloved Edward Harrington! and, after a few brilliant years in
the Oriental clime,

----"on Hoogley's banks afar,
Looks down on thy lone tomb the Evening Star."

How genius shone o'er thy fine features, yet how pale thou ever wast;
thou who sat'st then by the Sailor's side, and listened to his sallies
with a mournful smile--friend! dearest to our soul! loving us far better
than we deserved; for though faultless thou, yet tolerant of all our
frailties--and in those days of hope from thy lips how elevating was
praise! Yet how seldom do we think of thee! For months--years--not at
all--not once--sometimes not even when by some chance we hear your name!
It meets our eyes written on books that once belonged to you and that
you gave us--and yet of yourself it recalls no image. Yet we sank down
to the floor on hearing thou wast dead--ungrateful to thy memory for
many years we were not--but it faded away till we forgot thee utterly,
except when sleep showed thy grave!

Methinks we hear the song of the GREY LINTIE, the darling bird of
Scotland. None other is more tenderly sung of in our old ballads. When
the simple and fervent love-poets of our pastoral times first applied to
the maiden the words, "my bonnie burdie," they must have been thinking
of the Grey Lintie--its plumage ungaudy and soberly pure--its shape
elegant yet unobtrusive--and its song various without any effort--now
rich, gay, sprightly, but never rude nor riotous--now tender, almost
mournful, but never gloomy or desponding. So, too, are all its habits,
endearing and delightful. It is social, yet not averse to solitude,
singing often in groups, and as often by itself in the furze brake, or
on the briery knoll. You often find the lintie's nest in the most
solitary places--in some small self-sown clump of trees by the brink of
a wild hill-stream, or on the tangled edge of a forest; and just as
often you find it in the hedgerow of the cottage garden, or in a bower
within, or even in an old gooseberry bush that has grown into a sort of
tree.

One wild and beautiful place we well remember--ay, the very bush, in
which we first found a grey lintie's nest--for in our parish, from some
cause or other, it was rather a rarish bird. That far-away day is as
distinct as the present NOW. Imagine, friend, first, a little well
surrounded with wild cresses on the moor; something like a rivulet flows
from it, or rather y