One brief example more--Emilia, after the murder of her mistress-- "Hark! canst thou hear me? I will play the swan; And die in music." In all this there lurks not one particle of sober prose--one syllable of truth. The most learned refutation of it may be found, in the Pseudodoxia of Sir Thomas Browne, ii. 517, Lond. 1835. In the "_Memoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions_," M. Morin discusses the question very agreeably, why swans, that sang so delightfully, of old, sing so miserably, at the present day. Tame swans, he observes, are mutes: but the wild swan exerts its vocal powers, after a fashion of its own. He introduces the observations of the Abbé Arnaud, upon the performances of a couple of wild swans, which had located, upon the lagoons of Chantilly. "One can hardly say," says the Abbé, "that the swans of Chantilly sing--they cry; but their cries are truly and constantly modulated. Their voice is not sweet; on the contrary, it is shrill, piercing, and rather disagreeable; I could compare it to nothing better than the sound of a clarionet, winded by a person unacquainted with the instrument." Nothing surely savors less of melody than this. So thought Buffon--"_Des sons bruyans de clarion, mais dont les tons aigus et peu diversifiés sont néanmoins tres--éloignés de la tendre mélodie et de la variété douce et brilliante du ramage de nos oiseaux chanteurs_." Nat. Hist. des Oisaux, ix. 25. In his exposition of this error, imposed upon mankind, by the poets, Buffon expresses himself with singular beauty, in the concluding paragraph--"Nulle fiction en Histoire Naturelle, nulle fable chez les Anciens n'a ete plus célébrée, plus répétée, plus accréditee; elle s'étoit emparée de l'imagination vive et sensible des Grecs; poëtes, orateurs, philosophes méme l'ont adoptée, comme une verité trop agreable pour vouloir en douter. Il faut bien leur pardonner leurs fables; elles étoient aimables et touchantes; elles valoient bien de tristes, d'arides verités c'etoient de doux emblémes pour les ames sensibles. Les cygnes, sans doute, ne chantent point leur mort; mais toujours, en parlant du dernier essor et de derniers élans d'un beau génie pret á s'éteindre, on rappellera avec sentiment cette expression touchante--_c'est le chant du cygne!_" Ibid. 28. It is not surprising, that these celebrated naturalists, Buffon and Morin, who discourse, so eloquently, of Grecian and Roman swans, should say nothing of Swedish nightingales, for, between their time and the present, numerous additions have been made to the catalogue of songsters. The very thing, which the barber, Arkwright did, for all the spinning Jennies, in Lancashire, some seventy years ago, has been done by Jenny Lind, for all the singing Jennies upon earth, beside herself--they are cast into the shade.