doe's side
but for a momentary race along the edge of the coppice; a rustle and a
shadow--and the burden is borne off to the cliffs of Benevis. In an
instant the small animal is dead--after a short exultation torn into
pieces, and by eagles and eaglets devoured, its unswallowed or
undigested bones mingle with those of many other creatures, encumbering
the eyrie, and strewed around it over the bloody platform on which the
young demons crawl forth to enjoy the sunshine.

Oh for the life of an eagle written by himself! It would outsell the
Confessions even of the English Opium-Eater. Proudly would he, or she,
write of birth and parentage. On the rock of ages he first opened his
eyes to the sun, in noble instinct affronting and outstaring the light.
The Great Glen of Scotland--hath it not been the inheritance of his
ancestors for many thousand years? No polluting mixture of ignoble
blood, from intermarriages of necessity or convenience with kite,
buzzard, hawk, or falcon. No, the Golden Eagles of Glen-Falloch,
surnamed the Sun-starers, have formed alliances with the Golden Eagles
of Cruachan, Benlawers, Shehallion, and Lochnagair--the
Lightning-Glints, the Flood-fallers, the Storm-wheelers, the
Cloud-cleavers, ever since the deluge. The education of the
autobiographer had not been intrusted to a private tutor. Parental eyes,
beaks, and talons, provided sustenance for his infant frame; and in that
capacious eyrie, year after year repaired by dry branches from the
desert, parental advice was yelled into him, meet for the expansion of
his instinct, as wide and wonderful as the reason of earth-crawling man.
What a noble naturalist did he, in a single session at the College of
the Cliff, become! Of the customs, and habits, and haunts of all
inferior creatures, he speedily made himself master--ours included. Nor
was his knowledge confined to theory, but reduced to daily practice. He
kept himself in constant training--taking a flight of a couple of
hundred miles before breakfast--paying a forenoon visit to the farthest
of the Hebride Isles, and returning to dinner in Glenco. In one day he
has flown to Norway on a visit to his uncle by the mother's side, and
returned the next to comfort his paternal uncle, lying sick at the Head
of the Cambrian Dee. He soon learned to despise himself for having once
yelled for food, when food was none; and to sit or sail, on rock or
through ether, athirst and an hungered, but mute. The virtues of