can interpose obstacles powerful enough to quell the enterprise of man!—­that the rocky caverns of the loneliest sea-coasts, and the deepest recesses of inland forests, are insufficient to protect from him the most terrible beasts of prey which inhabit them;—­and that, in short, all the kingdoms of nature pay tribute to his sagacity or his power, his courage or his curiosity.  This feeling is heightened, amidst the scene we have attempted to describe, by still more numerous representatives of the feathered race.  Birds of the boldest wing and brightest hues—­the denizens of the woods and the waters—­of every variety of plumage, habit, song, and size—­from the splendid macaw and toucan to the uncouth pelican and the shapeless puffin—­from the gigantic ostrich to the beautiful but diminutive golden wren; in short, all the birds which are congregated in this spot come, literally, from every corner of our globe.  The great alpine vulture may have sailed above the heights of Hohenlinden; the Egyptian vulture have roosted on the terraced roofs of Cairo, or among the sacred walls of Phylae; the condor, have built in the ruined palaces of the Incas of Peru; the flamingo or the ibis have waded through the lakes and marshes which surround the desolation of Babylon; the eagle of America have ranged, perhaps daily, over those narrow straits which separate two worlds and bid defiance to all navigation!  The emu has long since tracked the vast interior of that fifth continent whose inland rivers, tribes of mankind, quadrupeds, and mineral and vegetable productions, remain still, to us, sealed mysteries.  The crowned crane has drawn its food from the waters of that vast lake of Tschad, in the search for which so many Europeans have perished; the little stormy petrel, borne on the surge, or wafted by the gale, has travelled to every shore that has been visited by the tempests in which it loves to rove; and the wandering stork, like the restless swallow, has nestled, indifferently, among the chimneys of Amsterdam, the campaniles of Rome or of Pisa, and on the housetops of Timbuctoo.  In looking round upon these various birds and quadrupeds of all the regions of our globe—­in considering the distant countries of their birth—­their strangeness to us in feature or in form—­the endless varieties of their instincts, their habits, their affections, their antipathies, their appetites—­the several important offices they are destined to perform in what may be called the physical economy of the world,—­in observing the powers of offence in some, of defence in others, and the astonishing means which have been supplied to certain classes of them destitute both of one and the other, of procuring their subsistence with equal facility,—­it is surely impossible not to ascend to the contemplation of that all-wise and benevolent Power which has called all these creations into being, and thus informed and thus endowed them!”

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ST. PANCRAS OLD CHURCH.