bird, in a drab waistcoat, slightly mottled, and with a loud, cracked voice, which nobody ever liked.  So it never became a favorite, even to those who first gave it the name of lark.  It was not its only defect that it lacked an ear and voice for music.  There is always a scolding accent that marks its conversation with other birds in the brightest mornings of June.  He is very noisy, but never merry nor musical.  Indeed, compared with the notes of the English lark, his are like the vehement ejaculations of a maternal duck in distress.

Take it in all, no bird in either hemisphere equals the English lark in heart or voice, for both unite to make it the sweetest, happiest, the welcomest singer that was ever winged, like the high angels of God’s love.  It is the living ecstacy of joy when it mounts up into its “glorious privacy of light.”  On the earth it is timid, silent, and bashful, as if not at home, and not sure of its right to be there at all.  It is rather homely withal, having nothing in feather, feature, or form, to attract notice.  It is seemingly made to be heard, not seen, reversing the old axiom addressed to children when getting voicy.  Its mission is music, and it floods a thousand acres of the blue sky with it several times a day.  Out of that palpitating speck of living joy there wells forth a sea of twittering ecstacy upon the morning and evening air.  It does not ascend by gyrations, like the eagle or birds of prey.  It mounts up like a human aspiration.  It seems to spread out its wings and to be lifted straight upwards out of sight by the afflatus of its own happy heart.  To pour out this in undulating rivulets of rhapsody is apparently the only motive of its ascension.  This it is that has made it so loved of all generations.  It is the singing angel of man’s nearest heaven, whose vital breath is music.  Its sweet warbling is only the metrical palpitation of its life of joy.  It goes up over the roof-trees of the rural hamlet on the wings of its song, as if to train the rural soul to trial flights heavenward.  Never did the Creator put a voice of such volume into so small a living thing.  It is a marvel—­almost a miracle.  In a still hour you can hear it at nearly a mile’s distance.  When its form is lost in the hazy lace-work of the sun’s rays above, it pours down upon you all the thrilling semitones of its song as distinctly as if it were warbling to you in your window.

The only American bird that could star it with the English lark, and win any admiration at a popular concert by its side, is our favourite comic singer, the Bobolink.  I have thought often, when listening to British birds at their morning rehearsals, what a sensation would ensue if Master Bob, in his odd-fashioned bib and tucker, should swagger into their midst, singing one of those Low-Dutch voluntaries which he loves to pour down into the ears of our mowers in haying time.  Not only would such an apparition and overture throw the best-trained orchestra of Old World birds into amazement or confusion, but astonish all the human listeners at an English concert.  With what a wonderment would one of these blooming, country milkmaids look at the droll harlequin, and listen to those familiar words of his, set to his own music:-