554 PRÆTERITA-III

led by their kings. Had Queen Mary led, like Zenobia, at Langside;¹ had Charles I. charged instead of Prince Rupert at Naseby; and Prince Edward bade Lochiel follow him at Culloden, we should not to-day have been debating who was to be our king at Birmingham or Glasgow. For the rest I take the bye-help that Fors gives me in this record of the power of a bird’s voice only.*

81. But the distinction of the music of Scotland from every other is in its association with sweeter natural sounds, and filling a deeper silence. As Fors also ordered it, yesterday afternoon, before Joanie sang these songs to me, I had been, for the first time since my return from Venice, down to the shore of my own lake, with her and her two youngest children, at the little promontory of shingle thrown out into it by the only mountain brook on this eastern side, (Beck Leven,) which commands the windings of its wooded shore under Furness Fells, and the calm of its fairest expanse of mirror wave,-a scene which is in general almost melancholy in its perfect solitude; but, when the woods are in their gladness, and the green-how much purer, how much softer than ever emerald!-of their unsullied spring, and the light of dawning summer, possessing alike the clouds and mountains of the west,-it is,

* “An extraordinary scene is to be witnessed every evening at Leicester in the freemen’s allotment gardens, where a nightingale has established itself. The midnight songster was first heard a week ago, and every evening hundreds of people line the roads near the trees where the bird has his haunt. The crowds patiently wait till the music begins, and the bulk of the listeners remain till midnight, while a number of enthusiasts linger till one and two o’clock in the morning. Strange to say, the bird usually sings in a large thorn bush just over the mouth of the tunnel of the Midland main line, but the songster is heedless of noise, and smoke, and steam, his stream of song being uninterrupted for four or five hours every night. So large has been the throng of listeners that the chief constable has drafted a number of policemen to maintain order and prevent damage.” -Pall Mall Gazette, May 11th, 1889.

¹ [The battle of Langside, May 13, 1568; fatal to the cause of Mary Queen of Scots: see The Abbot, ch. xxxvii. (compare Vol. XXXIV. p. 381 n.). For Zenobia, see Gibbon, chapter xi.]

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