[Footnote DP: "At the commencement of the French Revolution, in the remotest villages every tongue was employed in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the physiocratic politicians and economists. The public roads were crowded with armed enthusiasts disputing on the inalienable sovereignty of the people, the imprescriptible laws of the pure reason, and the universal constitution, which, as rising out of the nature and rights of man as man, all nations alike were under the obligation of adopting."-S.T. Coleridge, _The Statesman's Manual, a Lay Sermon_ (1816), p. 19.--ED.] [Footnote DQ: The Hudson river, some of the sources of which rise in the Adirondack wilderness.--ED.] [Footnote DR: New York.--ED.] [Footnote DS: See Wordsworth's note, p. 386.--ED.] [Footnote DT: The St. Lawrence.--ED.] [Footnote DU: "The Mocking Bird (_Turdus polyglottus_, Linn.), the American nightingale. He has a voice full, strong, and musical, and capable of almost every modulation, from the clear mellow tones of the Wood Thrush, to the savage scream of the Bald Eagle. In measure and accent he faithfully follows his originals. In force and sweetness of expression he greatly improves upon them. In his native groves, his song rises pre-eminent over every competitor. Neither is his strain altogether imitative. His notes are bold and full, and varied seemingly beyond all limits. They consist of short expressions of two, three, or, at the most, five or six syllables; generally interspersed with imitations, and all of them uttered with great emphasis and rapidity, and continued with undiminished ardour for half an hour, or an hour at a time."--_American Ornithology_, by Wilson, Bonaparte, and Jardine, vol. i. p. 164, etc.--ED.] [Footnote DV: I was indebted to Mr. Edward B. Tylor, and also to the Rev. Charles M. Addison, of Arlington, Mass., for identifying the "melancholy Muccawiss" as the Whip-poor-will (_Caprimulgus vociferus_, or _Antrostomus vociferus_). "Their melancholy night song has led some Indians to consider them the souls of ancestors killed in battle."--Mr. Tylor. For letters in reference to the Muccawiss, see Note C in the Appendix to this volume, p. 393; and compare Charles Waterton's _Wanderings in South America_, etc. etc. (1828), and Wordsworth's poem, _A Morning Exercise_, written in 1828. Since Messrs. Tylor, Addison, and Col. Trumbull identified the Muccawiss with the Whip-poor-will, I have had access to the original MSS. of _The Excursion_; and have found that the point which is discussed--in the above note and in Note C in the Appendix--is set conclusively at rest, by one of the earlier (discarded) readings of the text in Wordsworth's own handwriting. "and verily was cheered By the blithe Mocking Bird, and heard alone The melancholy cry of whip-pow-will." Another version of the last line is also given, "The plaintive cry repeated whip-poor-will."