s of their souls, the lights and the shadows
of the dear days that far away were beautifying some sacred spot of "_la
belle France_"--perhaps some festal scene, for love in sorrow is still
true to remembered joy, where once with youths and maidens

"They led the dance beside the murmuring Loire."

There you heard--and hushed then was all the hubbub--some clear silver
voice, sweet almost as woman's, yet full of manhood in its depths,
singing to the gay guitar, touched, though the musician was of the best
and noblest blood of France, with a master's hand, "La belle Gabrielle!"
And there might be seen, in the solitude of their own abstractions, men
with minds that had sounded the profounds of science, and, seemingly
undisturbed by all that clamour, pursuing the mysteries of lines and
numbers--conversing with the harmonies and lofty stars of heaven, deaf
to all the discord and despair of earth. Or religious still even more
than they--for those were mental, these spiritual--you beheld there men,
whose heads before their time were becoming grey, meditating on their
own souls, and in holy hope and humble trust in their Redeemer, if not
yet prepared, perpetually preparing themselves for the world to come!

To return to Birds in Cages;--they are, when well, uniformly as happy as
the day is long. What else could oblige them, whether they will or no,
to burst out into song--to hop about so pleased and pert--to play such
fantastic tricks, like so many whirligigs--to sleep so soundly, and to
awake into a small, shrill, compressed twitter of joy at the dawn of
light? So utterly mistaken was Sterne, and all the other
sentimentalists, that his Starling, who he absurdly opined was wishing
to get out, would not have stirred a peg had the door of his cage been
flung wide open, but would have pecked like a very game-cock at the hand
inserted to give him his liberty. Depend upon it, that Starling had not
the slightest idea of what he was saying; and had he been up to the
meaning of his words, would have been shocked at his ungrateful folly.
Look at Canaries, and Chaffinches, and Bullfinches, and "the rest," how
they amuse themselves for a while flitting about the room, and then,
finding how dull a thing it is to be citizens of the world, bounce up to
their cages, and shut the door from the inside, glad to be once more at
home. Begin to whistle or sing yourself, and forthwith you have a duet
or a trio. We can imagine no more perfectly t