is ease. How beautiful and
majestic are his movements! So self-poised and easy, such an entire
absence of haste, such a magnificent amplitude of circles and spirals,
such a haughty, imperial grace, and, occasionally, such daring aerial
evolutions!

With slow, leisurely movement, rarely vibrating his pinions, he mounts
and mounts in an ascending spiral till he appears a mere speck against
the summer sky; then, if the mood seizes him, with wings half-closed,
like a bent bow, he will cleave the air almost perpendicularly, as if
intent on dashing himself to pieces against the earth; but on nearing
the ground, he suddenly mounts again on broad, expanded wing, as if
rebounding upon the air, and sails leisurely away. It is the sublimest
feat of the season. One holds his breath till he sees him rise again.
Sometimes a squirrel or bird or an unsuspecting barn-fowl is scathed and
withered beneath this terrible visitation.

If inclined to a more gradual and less precipitous descent, he fixes his
eye on some distant point in the earth beneath him, and thither bends
his course. He is still almost meteoric in his speed and boldness. You
see his path down the heavens, straight as a line; if near, you hear the
rush of his wings; his shadow hurtles across the fields, and in an
instant you see him quietly perched upon some low tree or decayed stub
in a swamp or meadow, with reminiscences of frogs and mice stirring in
his maw.

When the south-wind blows, it is a study to see three or four of these
air-kings at the head of the valley far up toward the mountain,
balancing and oscillating upon the strong current: now quite stationary,
except a slight tremulous motion like the poise of a rope-dancer, then
rising and falling in long undulations, and seeming to resign themselves
passively to the wind; or, again, sailing high and level far above the
mountain's peak,--no bluster and haste, but, as stated, occasionally a
terrible earnestness and speed. Fire at him as he sails overhead, and,
unless wounded badly, he will not change his course or gait.

His flight is a perfect picture of repose in motion. He might sleep
dream in that level, effortless, aimless sail. It strikes the eye as
more surprising than the flight of the Pigeon and Swallow even, in that
the effort put forth is so uniform and delicate as to escape
observation, giving to the movement an air of buoyancy and perpetuity,
the effluence of power rather than the conscious applicati