nest out of which other harmonies are to charm the warbling grove; and then, too, the young fledglings will come back to you, all bright and beautiful, and touched with the spirit of gladness in which their breezy cradle swung. Why, is not this enough to make a mother’s soul leap to her laughing eyes! WEDNESDAY, JAN. 24. Nature never leaves any portion of her troubled domain without a compensation. Here, where the hills and plains, under the long summer’s drought, become so parched and dry that the grasshoppers cease to sing, she presents a pingrass, on which the cattle still thrive; and when this fails, it has already dropped a seed even more nutritious than the stem which sustained its bulbous cradle. For this, a California horse will leave the best bin of oats that ever waved in the harvest-moon. The first copious shower, which usually occurs in November, destroys it, but around its ruins another grass springs, to throw its green velvet, inwrought with millions of flowers, on the charmed eye. It is no wonder the birds here sing through the year, and forego those migrations to which they are subjected in other climes. The lay of the robin, the whistle of the quail, and the tender notes of the curlew, are always piping in the grove, or filling with melody the garden-tree. Were the blackbird to migrate, and never come back, no farmer would regret his absence; for he is a mischievous bird, who has no respect for the rights of property. He squats by millions where he likes and would rob a wheat-field of its last kernel with a thousand thunders rattling overhead. His legions darken the heaven where they fly, and drown all other harmonies in the jargon of their obstreperous chatter. They are said to be good for a pot-pie; and there are enough of them here to plump a pie around which nations might sit and carve at will: and how much better to be carving a common pie than carving into each other’s lands,—to be popping at blackbirds than shooting each other. There is not a blackbird but what laughs under his glossy wing when he sees a man levelling his gun at another, which the sable rogue knows ought to be levelled at him; and when the smoke-clouds loom up from the field of battle, he chatters in very glee, and even the eyes of the sedate raven are filled with unwonted light. Man makes himself a mournful tragedy and ludicrous comedy in the great creation of God.