I should like to have Mr. Burroughs or some of our naturalists write one of their pleasant papers and explain the mystery of the wood-thrush’s advent in our gardens and upon our lawns.  Until a year ago the wood-thrush was not one of the birds which ever raised its note in our pleasure-grounds.  We heard them in the woods, and looked at them, when we intruded upon their privacy, with that sort of shyness with which we watch strangers.  We knew their “wood-notes wild,” and admired their plumage, but they did not inspire the same feeling as their cousin the robin.  But a year ago all at once here was the thrush.  Nobody could tell when he came, how he came or why he came.  It seemed an accident, for there was but one pair:  it was as if through innocence or ignorance, instead of building their nests in their old chosen haunts, they had wandered away and lost themselves in the spacious grounds of a gentleman’s country-seat.  They had no dismay, no doubts, however:  they took possession of the lawn with the utmost boldness.  They were rarely out of sight, hopping from morning until night about the turf, flying from tree to tree with their impulsive movements, more graceful than the robins.  They were never silent, uttering perpetually their mellow flute-like cry and singing their simple but ecstatic melody.

That was last year; and this year, 1880, the thrushes are everywhere in this Connecticut village by the Sound.  Their orange-and-tawny backs gleam in the sunshine from morning until night.  There are numbers of them.  Their manners are very marked.  They have quite the air of conquerors.  All the other birds yield them precedence, and they positively domineer over the pugnacious little English sparrow, who is content to keep in the background and watch his chance when feeding-time comes.

And of all the curious things about them, what seems most inexplicable is their tameness.  They have no mistrust, but eye you with an intelligent, knowing look while bringing their young to feed within half a dozen feet of you.  They perch on the croquet-arches in the midst of a noisy game.  They sing directly over your head with the utmost spirit and vivacity, hardly ceasing all the forenoon, and again bursting out toward evening and maintaining their song until every other bird’s lay is hushed in the twilight.  White of Selborne would have delighted in such a freak on the part of these pretty gay strangers, who have left secluded swampy haunts, the deep dells where the blackberries twine and the daisies and clover blossom, for our close-cut lawns and elm- and willow-shaded nooks.—­A.T.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Alexander Pope.  By Leslie Stephen. (English Men-of-Letters Series.) New York:  Harper & Brothers.