And though you with your utmost skill From labour could not wean them,

'Tis little, very little, all

That they can do between them.

8.

Few months of life has he in store
As he to you will tell,

For still, the more he works, the more
Do his weak ankles swell.

My gentle reader, I perceive
How patiently you've waited,
And now I fear that you expect
Some tale will be related.

9.

O reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,

O gentle reader! you would find
A tale in everything.

What more I have to say is short,

And you must kindly take it :
It is no tale; but, should you think,
Perhaps a tale you'll make it.

10.

One summer-day I chanced to see
This old man doing all he could
To unearth the root of an old tree,
A stump of rotten wood.
The mattock tottered in his hand;
So vain was his endeavour,
That at the root of the old tree

He might have worked for ever.

11.

'You're overtasked, good Simon Lee,
Give me your tool,' to him I said;
And at the word right gladly he
Received my proffered aid.
I struck, and with a single blow
The tangled root I severed,
At which the poor old man so long
And vainly had endeavoured.

12.

The tears into his eyes were brought,
And thanks and praises seemed to run
So fast out of his heart, I thought
They never would have done.

I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;

Alas! the gratitude of men

Has oftener left me mourning.

'Not one fowler in fifty thousand,' writes Christopher North, has in all his days shot an eagle.' Beside the difficulty of it, there is a certain daring impiety in such an act, which perhaps disturbs the aim. Above that glorious bird-between him and the sun-no living thing can soar. From a region of unbroken solitude, he scans the movements of the minutest creatures here below with eyes of fire. Even when very young, they possess this marvellous power of vision. An eaglet was tethered

to a rock on a mountain summit, where, from a lurkingplace built of loose stones, the hunter hoped to get a shot at the parents when they came to bring it food. Long before he perceived anything, the young bird would utter its cry of welcome, and its screaming and fluttering would always warn him of the approach of those magnificent creatures, who were not as yet to him even a point in the sky. Great as are the distances which these birds sometimes fly, it becomes comprehensible when we know that an eagle, as he sweeps freely through the air, traverses a space of sixty feet in a second of time. To be able thus rapidly to move along is undoubtedly an attribute of power; but there is something far more imposing, far more majestic, in that calm, onward motion, when, with wings outspread, and quite still, the mighty bird floats buoyantly in the atmosphere, upheld and borne along by the mere act of volition. The length of time he can thus remain suspended without a single beat of his broad shadowy pinions is, to me, still an inexplicable fact. He will sail forward in a perfectly horizontal direction for a distance of more than a mile, without the slightest quiver of a feather giving sign that the wings are moved. Not less extraordinary is the power the bird possesses of arresting himself instantaneously at a certain spot in dropping through the air with folded wings from a height of three or four thousand feet. When circling so high up that he shews but as a dot, he will suddenly close both wings, and, falling like an aerolite, pass through the intervening space in a few seconds of time. With a burst, his broad pinions are again unfolded; his downward progress is arrested, and he sweeps away horizontally, smoothly, and without effort. He has been seen to do this when carrying a sheep of twenty-six

pounds' weight in his talons, and from so giddy a height that both the eagle and his booty were not larger than a sparrow. It was directly over a wall of rock in which the eyrie was built; and while the speck in the clouds was being examined, and doubts entertained as to the possibility of its being the eagle, down he came headlong, every instant increasing in size, when, in passing the precipice, out flew his mighty wings, the sheep was flung into the nest, and on the magnificent creature moved, calmly and unflurried as a bark sails gently down the stream of a river.'

An eagle does not dart down upon his prey as a robin upon a worm. He will not descend to any spot of ground unless he can leave it again with the same bold curve with which he came. Through this many a lamb escapes, and the eagle fasts. That bird can go for a week or even a fortnight without eating anything, but when he does eat, his voracity is proportionable to his enforced abstinence. In building his eyrie, he always chooses a spot inaccessible to his enemies-some ledge sheltered by the overhanging rock, whither man (apparently) cannot climb, and where his young will be safe from weasles and other vermin; a rock facing the south is the favourite locality, since the sun insures the egg being kept warm in the mother's absence. Such spots, of course, are rare, and therefore made use of for this purpose again and again. At Rohrmoos, in Allgau, thirty miles from the Lake of Constance, such an eyrie had been tenanted during the breeding-season for time immemorial; and on July 13, 1860, one Count Max Arco, a hero who had shot ten eagles, sat down before the place with the intention of rifling it of the eaglet it was known to contain. This feat was pronounced by the