it certainly is, and yet it does not weary us, this ceaseless “silver-treble laughter.” This song has its parallel in some life, gay and blight and glad from first to last; hiding for a sobered moment from a shower or a storm, but anon and on a sudden recovering its innocent glee again. Delicate and slim, and easily frightened, but never long troubled; very winning and loveable; too tender and pretty for the hardest hand to crush; never doing huge deeds in the world, but of the same value that a fugitive sunbeam would be in a heavy and gloomy wood, or a daisy in a desert. Keeping the Child’s heart through the Woman’s life; feeling sorrow lightly, and with an April heart; disarming anger or harshness by its simple gleeful innocence; frail yet safe as a feather upon the whirls and eddies of life. Laugh on, light and cheery heart, amid the jay’s harsh dissonance, and the blackbird’s thought, and the thrush’s strength, and the dove’s sadness! Amid Life’s gravities and stern realities there is a grateful place for the gleams of a glad-hearted song like thine! [Illustration] What variety in the character of the bird-music! Hark, for a moment, at those wise, solemn caws, and watch those sedate, respectable, gravely-clad Rooks sailing across this opening above us; so black and cleanly painted against the filmy blue. _Caw!_ This is the voice of a steady, respectable mediocrity, that by reason of its deep, portentous gravity, and weighty utterance, and staid appearance, might be almost mistaken for philosophy. True, the utterance, if profound, is not remarkable for variety; but then the manner will often make up for lack of matter. And it is something to have one maxim or apophthegm which may be fitted to every case. To all the world’s customs and businesses, its problems and aspirings, its cries and laughter, he gravely and meditatively listens. And when you eagerly await his verdict, he puts his sapient head on one side, looks at you out of one eye, “And says,--what says he? CAW!” The young impatient askers, the subtle and patient tracers of truth’s hidden vein, will chafe at his sedate utterances, and in time take their confidences elsewhere. But he can get on without them, and will never want for company of his kind. Raised above all intellectual excitements, and never in a hurry, the rooks step side by side with stately dignity over the scarred earth; or wing a heavy and cautious flight towards the trees; or sail serene in the still sky. For though there may be times when “The rooks are blown about the skies,”