The times., 1889-09-27
INHABITANTS or THE AIR.
Impressions OF Two Beautiful and Pa
thetio stories About Birds.


thetio stories About Birds.
The marvellous powers by which
birds can guide themselves from the
pole to the Mediterranean, from the
White Nile TO the Thuringian forests,
are the most inscrutable and pro-
foundly interesting OF all natural
wonders. The scalpel and the cruci-
BILE of the vivisectionist and the chem
ist cannot penetrate its secrets, and
the evOlutiOnist may fit his pet theo-
ries as he will to its mysteries; he will
fail to explain it.
Tourgenieff, in THE Quail, "sets the
problem before us, but can give no
solution; the small body of the quail,
her courage for her brood, her little
beating heart, her affection, her inno-
cence, her full, sweet, happy life,
harming nothing under the grasses
and the dark leaves, and all its lovli-
ness looked on merely as an aim for
gun, as toothsome morsel for an epi-
cure! Oh, the pity of it the pity of
it'll The cruel and senseless waste of
love and pain Desdemona's death
was not half so pitiful as the death of
the birds with ever day that dawns.
TourgenieE, a child even when he
saw the quail, never forgot her. If
such lessons could oftener be given to
boyhood, perhaps hearts less noble
than Tourgenietf's might be moved.
and the minds less lofty than his be
touched to some compassion and to
comprehension.
l would have Tourgenieff's Quail"
and Dostoieffsky's printed and given
to every lad who can understand
beauty of thought and style.
The eagle had been captured in the
snare and brought to "a prison in 81
IBERIA; the prisoners keep it and see in
its intense misery the reflection and
expression of their own. Then spring
comes - the late, harsh, Siberian
spring. Some among them wish to
give it freedom, others demur. Why
should bird be set free when their
own lives must drag on under chains
until death brings insensibility and
mockery of released
The debate is long, and for a while
the more selfish prevail. They suffer;
let the eagle suffer with them. But
at last the nobler and moro gener-
Gus have their -ay. The eagle is un-
chained. For a few moments, be-
wildered and incredulous, he cannot
realize his liberty then slowly he rises
and spreads his mighty wings and
sails above the parapet of the bastion
and passes away, soaring higher and
higher in the misty air until he is lost
from sight against the clouds.
The men to whom freedom can
never come watch him with aching
eyes-giving to him that which death
alone can give to them. All the high
est parts of genius-its sympathy, its
tenderness, its comprehension, its pas
sion of pity and freedom-are embod-
led in these two bird stories of the two
great Russian writers; and whoever
could read either without emotion
would indeed be cursed with that
secheresse de coeur which modern ed
ucation has done so much to create.
Tourgenief and Dostoieffsky would
feel the heart beats of that murdered
quail, the overwhelming misery of the
imprisoned eagle, because they were
men of that evident genius which is uni
versal comprehension; but some echo
of this comprehension, some fibers of
it, may be aroused in all who study
and love nature-not with the cold
inquisitiveness of so called naturalists,
but with the warmth of sympathy and
the reverence of pantheism.
1t is not the naturalist, capable of
killing every rare specimen that he
spies by mere or brake, who loves
birds, but the poet who listens to the
sad evening cry of the agiale, like
Shelley, or who translates the
throstle's strong March lyric into hui
man verse, like Austin, or who can
chant the glorious rapture of the sea-
gull flight like Swinburne, who loves
both birds and nature. To be awaken
ed in the soft gray of earliest dawn by
the Laus Dec of the merle, and Hail to
thee; o, day of the nightingale, thrill
ling, shouting, echoing through the
leaves beneath our chamber windows,
is one Of the sweetest and purest joys
of life e-O1ida i'm CoSmODOlitan