“I can hardly,” says an English officer who was encamped in India near a lake overstocked with fish, “I can hardly censure the taste of the Indians who banish from a consecrated pond, the net of the fisher, the angler's hook and the fowler's gun. Shoals of large fish giving life to the clear water of a large lake covered with flocks of aquatic birds, afford to the sight a gratification which would be ill exchanged for the momentary indulgence of appetite.” My excellent friend would heartily have agreed with this Englishman: but in the waters of Paradise he would have thought, neither did the fish prey upon each other, nor the birds upon them, death not being necessary there as the means of providing aliment for life. That there are waters in the Regions of the Blessed, Bede it is said, assures us for this reason, that they are necessary there to temper the heat of the Sun. And Cornelius à Lapide has found out a most admirable use for them above the firmament,—which is to make rivers and fountains and waterworks for the recreation of the souls in bliss, whose seat is in the Empyrean Heaven. “If an herd of kine,” says Fuller, “should meet together to fancy and define happiness,—(that is to imagine a Paradise for themselves,)—they would place it to consist in fine pastures, sweet grass, clear water, shadowy groves, constant summer; but if any winter, then warm shelter and dainty hay, with company after their kind, counting these low things the highest happiness, because their conceit can reach no higher. Little better do the heathen poets describe Heaven, paving it with pearl and roofing it with stars, filling it with Gods and Goddesses, and allowing them to drink, (as if without it, no poet's Paradise) nectar and ambrosia.” CHAPTER CCXIII. BIRDS OF PARADISE.—THE ZIZ.—STORY OF THE ABBOT OF ST. SALVADOR DE VILLAR.—HOLY COLETTE'S NONDESCRIPT PET.—THE ANIMALCULAR WORLD.—GIORDANO BRUNO. And so I came to Fancy's meadows, strow'd With many a flower; Fain would I here have made abode, But I was quickened by my hour. HERBERT. Hindoos and Mahommedans have stocked their heavens not only with mythological monsters but with beautiful birds of celestial kind. They who have read Thalaba will remember the Green warbler of the bowers of Paradise: and they who will read the history of the Nella-Rajah,—which whosoever reads or relates, shall (according to the author) enjoy all manner of happiness and planetary bliss,—that is to say, all the good fortune that can be bestowed by the nine great luminaries which influence human events,—they who read that amusing story will find that in the world of Daivers, or Genii, there are milk white birds called Aunnays, remarkable for the gracefulness of their walk, wonderfully endowed with knowledge and speech, incapable of deceit, and having power to look into the thoughts of men.