and perhaps the boy so long as he was incapable of distinguishing between their moral qualities, and their relative claims to his respect and love and duty, loved his uncle most of the three. The father had no idle hours; in the intervals when he was not otherwise employed, one of his dear books usually lay open before him, and if he was not feeding upon the page, he was ruminating the food it had afforded him. But William Dove from the time that his nephew became capable of noticing and returning caresses seemed to have concentered upon him all his affections. With children affection seldom fails of finding its due return; and if he had not thus won the boy's heart in infancy, he would have secured it in childhood by winning his ear with these marvellous stories. But he possessed another talent which would alone have made him a favourite with children,—the power of imitating animal sounds with singular perfection. A London manager would have paid him well for performing the cock in Hamlet. He could bray in octaves to a nicety, set the geese gabbling by addressing them in their own tongue, and make the turkey-cock spread his fan, brush his wing against the ground, and angrily gob-gobble in answer to a gobble of defiance. But he prided himself more upon his success with the owls, as an accomplishment of more difficult attainment. In this Mr. Wordsworth's boy of Winander was not more perfect. Both hands were used as an instrument in producing the notes; and if Pope could have heard the responses which came from barn and doddered oak and ivied crag, he would rather, (satirist as he was,) have left Ralph unsatirized, than have vilified one of the wildest and sweetest of nocturnal sounds. [Footnote 1: DONNE.] He was not less expert to a human ear in hitting off the wood-pigeon's note, though he could not in this instance provoke a reply. This sound he used to say ought to be natural to him, and it was wrong in the bird not to acknowledge his relation. Once when he had made too free with a lasses lips, he disarmed his brother of a reprehensive look, by pleading that as his name was William Dove it behoved him both to _bill_ and to _coo_. CHAPTER XI. P. I. A WORD TO THE READER, SHEWING WHERE WE ARE, AND HOW WE CAME HERE, AND WHEREFORE; AND WHITHER WE ARE GOING. 'Tis my venture On your retentive wisdom. BEN JONSON.