and looks, and figures, and colours of men, and women, and children, their faces and their clothes; and observe new coats, and hats, and shawls, and bonnets; and are pleased and displeased with new ribands, and new fashions! If Robins, alive or stuffed, are objects of curiosity, and sometimes of wonder and amazement, and I will add, of love and admiration, and of pity and compassion, to humanity; why should not humanity, as well, be sometimes the same object of curiosity, amazement, wonder, pity, love, or admiration, to us inquisitive, sensitive, tender-hearted Robins ; for are not all the universe united in the same bonds of sympathy, and in the same watchfulness of one another's wants, or forms, or ways? Besides, we often have to roam in search of food; and sometimes in search after our straying young ones.

But, though I enjoyed, in this manner, a general knowledge of the country round, yet I had never actually visited Cobbler Dykes's village before the evening in question; and it behoved me, therefore, at my first flying from the fingers of Mr. Gubbins, to look about, and see which way I was to go. I alighted, therefore, very speedily, upon the top of the opposite palings, as well for this special purpose, as to dress my wings and tail, and to recover myself a little from the nervousness attendant upon my late situation and confinement, of which freedom and the open air now made me even more duly sensible. As I perceived, however, at the next instant, that all my late acquaintance were in full gape at my doings; as there were but a few yards between us; and as I could not very well be sure of what the curiosity of my kind admirers might next put it into their heads to do upon my account; I made a second spring, and did not stop

till I reached the weathercock at the top of the gableend of a barn, where I prepared myself for further flight with greater safety, and possessed a view for no small part of my way. The place and colours of the light of heaven showed me the road I was to take, and warned me of the lateness of the hour; besides which, I felt the dew descending, and the cold increasing. The gale behind me brought with it other odours than those which belonged to home, and which, even for this reason, I knew to be on the opposite side. It blew off a wood of beech-trees, and was scented, too, with the pine, and came dry and sharp over the summits of the hills; while to my native and daily air belonged, in greater proportion, the breezes soft and moist from the streams and meadows, and the breath of willows, birches, ash-trees, and of rich grass and shining daisies*. Informed and fixed upon my road; repractised in the employment of my wings; my feathers dressed and nerves restored; I soon after accomplished, at a succession of short flights, the first three miles of my journey; and now I distinctly saw before me the heads of well-known trees, the spire of the village church, the smoke of the village mansion; and even beheld beneath my feet the dingles in which I often fed, and the waters which I often sipped and splashed. Looking behind me, I saw, upon the brow of a distant eminence, Mr. Gubbins, striding homeward with all his might; and I should have laughed, if nature had taught me to laugh as well as to sing, at the laborious speed, and panting exertion, with which he was plainly endeavouring, before the evening-star should glitter upward to the zenith, to reach his wished-for home, and make amends * Day's-eyes?

for the loss of time incurred through his ingenious curiosity! Elated at my own superior springiness, my shorter road, and freer yielding element, I scarcely saw him, I confess, before I once more rose into the air; and, tilting as I went, very soon was I beneath the yew-tree, and its berries, in the village churchyard; after which, a few short and jocund trips lodged me in safety behind the richly-flowered laurustinuses in Mr. Paulett's garden. The cat was prowling round it when I arrived, but I swept softly and silently into the large fir above, without her seeing me, or hearing the least rustle; though her uplifted nose and whiskers betrayed and confirmed her suspicions of the taint of prey, diffused in the still evening atmosphere *. I slept soundly till the morning. Mr. Gubbins, as I afterwards collected from his stories to his friends, did not reach home till an hour after me.

When morning, however, came, I found that it was not exactly true, as promised me by Mr. Gubbins, the day before, that all my troubles should end with the sunshine of that day. I had taken, hitherto, no more than small account of my collar. I admit, that from the moment of my freedom, I had made frequent and desultory attempts to remove it by means of my feet, (for I could not reach it with my bill); but I had found

* The cat kind have smellers, as well as feelers, in their whiskers; that is, the nerves of smell are elongated from the nose into the whiskers, and to their extremities. It follows from this, that they can discover their prey aloft, and through the medium of the air; while, in the contrast, the dog has no scent but for the ground, upon which, as is the common understanding, the scent must lie, or he is thrown out of the chase. If the fox, therefore, by leaping, or by taking the water, breaks the line of tainted earth, he thus eludes the dog; while the cat, destined, especially in the case of birds, to seek its prey where it may never touch the ground, has movable smellers, with which to pursue, as it were, and detect it in the air.

it give way; and I was at first too anxious for my home, and afterward too heavy for sleep, to think much on an encumbrance which I yet thought required only a serious effort to be at once dislodged. Unfortunate that I was! When morning came, and with it all the morning's strength and vigour, and keenness of apprehension, no effort that I could make released me from my collar! I was without experience in leathern collars, and without instruments to deal with them. Their infliction and stubbornness, like those of brick traps, and of some other of the works of human art, were calamities against which Nature has given to Robin-red-breasts no natural defence nor remedy. The burden of the collar was not great, but it totally interfered with all arrangements of my toilet for the due appearance of my neck; and, as to itself, how was it possible for me to show myself abroad, in so hideous, and it must be added, so humiliating a disguise? How could I account for it to my fellow birds? Was I to tell the adventure of the trap? Had I acquired it by misbehaviour? Was it like the fool's-cap of the schoolchildren? Had it been put upon me when I was napping; or, worse, when I was gluttonously feeding, and therefore inattentive! Had Richard or Emily stolen behind me, and slipped it upon me unawares; thereby demonstrating, that though it might be difficult for mice to bell the cat, young children might collar a Robin! So disgraceful a suspicion exceeded endurance. "Ho-ho! ha-ha! hu-hu! he-he! hi-hi!" would a whole flock of Robins, and sparrows, and finches, and tomtits exclaim; and repeat, and echo with a thousand voices: so, Robin has let Emily slip a collar round his neck; and to-morrow she will catch him, by putting salt upon his tail!" A scene like this, it was

impossible to meet, even if it were to be no more than thus merry, and if I had nothing to dread from it but ridicule! But ridicule is the first shade of hatred, of anger, and of violence; and who could tell but the disgusted birds might march from jest to pecks and blows, striking their bills and claws, first, indeed, at my collar, but soon after into my neck and eyes, my muscles and my heart! I was afraid therefore, as much as I was ashamed. And, then, for Burford Cottagefor the recesses of its shrubbery-for the enclosure of its lawn-for the microcosm of its flower-beds! Could I be seen in either; or, trusting myself into their precincts, and even warbling behind a pine-cone, or behind the velvet of a dahlia-flower, could I escape the danger of being seen? I had set my heart upon flying and warbling at Burford Cottage in the morning; but I had reckoned without my collar! This would have been my joy, my consolation, my reward; nay, more, my triumph! But was I to appear as a thrall instead of conqueror, and as a collared bondsman and a serf? Was I to show myself estranged, in a new guise, and as the menial of another; or was I to encourage, at Burford Cottage, by the contagion of such a display, the belief that it was possible for its inmates to make a menial of me themselves? Every particle of these thoughts was inadmissible; and the troubles of my foul captivity, so far from having reached their end, were still bowing me to the ground; for they condemned me to solitude, to seclusion, stillness, silence, terror, shame, and sorrow; to a hiding-place, a nook, a corner; to dumbness, selfdenial, hungering, and thirsting; and all this in the midst of the wide skies and the open fields, and with an outspread table, and with running water, and with