There is one comes before me, vividly, at this moment,--while that sweet robin-red-breast hops into my day-room, and bends his neck to look at me so knowingly and friendlily in my loneliness, as he doth, almost daily;--and the loved bird's image consorts delightfully with him I was thinking of,--for, above all things, the fine, noble-hearted, yet meek and gentle old alderman, loved to be thought and esteemed an _ornithologist_! That was his pride, his loftiest aim, his highest ambition,--as far as reputation or a name was the subject of his thought. As for his charities, and enlarged acts of sympathy for his suffering fellow-creatures, his deeds of mercy and goodness, he strove to hide them, performing them often by stealth, and half denying the performance of them, when admiration of his beneficence kindled praise of it in his hearing. Ah! it is too true: he relieved wretchedness till his purse was scanty, and his circumstances were straitened;--and then,--and then,--in spite of his aldermanic dignity, in spite of his "respectable" family connections, and even the respectability of his own practice and profession, as a surgeon,--he was mentioned as the "odd,"--the "singular,"--the "eccentric" Mr. ----! _That_ is the world. Who would have dreamt that Alderman----was odd, or singular, or eccentric, had he kept his money, instead of giving it to the distressed? But the kind-hearted old man thirsted for reputation as an _ornithologist_. Well, and in good sooth, he had some solid claim to it. Birds were his passion; and you seldom met any one who knew so much about them. I know not whether his relatives keep the book of drawings which the good man showed to me, as he had showed it to hundreds, with so much innocent pride;--taking care to relate how it had been begun when he was a young apprentice, and had taken him years to complete; above all, that it was the product of early hours stolen from sleep, and had never robbed, his professional duties of their proper share of attention. They ought to keep it, however, and to value it too. Not for the sake of any surpassing excellence in the portraitures of birds with which it was filled; for, although the good old man was so proud of the "_real_ birds," which he used to observe it contained, yet they were embodied to the eye somewhat in Chinese taste, as clearly as I can remember: rather with exactitude of pencillings and shades, than with skill in the "drawing" or attitude of the bird, or observance of rules of perspective, or "fore-shortening," or any of the intricacies of art. But the heart--the heart of the good man whose hand performed these curious and laborious limnings--should stamp a precious value on the book that contained them.