panded, until in this manner he alights on the tree where his mate is, or on one very near it.”

All birds are jealously inclined, save the golden-winged wood-pecker; this brilliant gentleman is the most amiable and sparkling of birds.

"It is generally agreeable to be in the company of individuals who are naturally animated and pleasant; for this reason, nothing can be more gratifying than the society of woodpeckers in the forests. To prove this to you, kind reader, I shall give you a fuil account of the habits of the goldenwinged woodpecker.

"This species, which is usually called pique-bois jaune by the French settlers in Louisiana, and receives the name of high-holder, yucker, and flicker in other parts of the Union, being seldom or never graced with the epithet goldenwinged, employed by naturalists, is one of the most lively of our birds, and is found over the whole of the United States.

"No sooner has spring called them to the pleasant duty of making love, as it is called, than their voice, which, by the way, is not at all disagreeable to the ear of man, is heard from the tops of high, decayed trees, proclaiming with delight the opening of the welcome season. Their note at this period is merriment itself; as it imitates a prolonged and jovial laugh, beard at a considerable distance. Several males pursue a female, reach her, and to prove the force and truth of their love, bow their heads, spread their tail, and move sidewise, backwards and forwards, performing such antics, as might induce any one witnessing them, if not of a morose temper, to join his laugh to theirs. The female flies to another tree, where she is closely followed by one, two, or even half a dozen of these gay suitors, and where again the same coremonies are gone through. No fightings occur, jealousies seem to exist among these beaux, until a marked

no

preference is shown to some individual, when the rejected proceed in search of another female. In this manner, all the golden-winged woodpeckers are soon happily mated. Each pair immediately proceed to excavate a trunk of a tree, and finish a hole in it sufficient to contain themselves and their young. They both work with great industry and apparent pleasure. Should the male, for instance, be employed, the female is close to him, and congratulates him on the removal of every chip which his bill sends through the air. While he rests, he appears to be speaking to her on the most tender subjects, and when fatigued, is at once assisted by her. In this manner, by the alternate exertions of each, the hole is dug and finished. They caress each other on the branches, climb about and around the tree with apparent delight, rattle with their bill against the tops of the dead branches, chase all their cousins, the red-heads, defy the Purple Grackles to enter their nest, feed plentifully on ants, beetles, and larva, cackling at intervals, and cre two weeks have clapsed, the female. lays either four or six eggs, the whiteness and transparency of which are doubtless the delight of their heart. If to raise a numerous progeny may contribute to happiness, these woodpeckers are in this respect happy enough, for they have two broods each season; and as this might induce you to imagine wood-peckers extremely abundant in America, I may at once tell you that they are so."

Such are the vivid, varied, naïve colors with which the pen of the Naturalist, picturesque as his pencil, comments on and explains the admirable plates which compose his work. So. too do we understand science. Thanks to the progress of civilization, she contents herself no longer with a dry nomenclature; and shuts herself up no longer amid the dust of old books. Adieu forever to the symbolic and artificial classifications, which took the place of a study of the world; and sub

stituted for harmonious nature, an indescribable skeleton whose erudite labels were the toys of the learned. Read those old monographs. What do you find there? titles and words, figures and eternal classifications which address neither the soul nor the thought. Is, O God! this thy living and eternal work, so full of animation! What puerile invention in the place of a grand whcle!

If

Here is an cagle on a peak; you talk much about a class of birds, which, say you, have crooked beaks and feet armed with talons. What do I care for that? Insipid cicerone, why do you come between me and the spectacle for which my curiosity is secking the causes-I want to know why that eagle is there; what interest has driven him from the plain where his prey abounds; why he choosee for throne and place of rest, that sharp rock, that sterile mass of broken ice; where is neither food nor shelter. I would know too, of what use are these arid, granite mountains bathed by the sea. you tell me that the cagle, has need of a very lofty peak wherefrom to take his flight because of the spread and disposition of his pinions; if you prove by the conformation of the globe, the necessity of mountains for the elaboration of metals, or as reservoirs for streams and rivers, then you will indeed instruct me-then I could understand something of the harmony of nature; and could bow respectfully before that vast and thousand-chorded instrument formed by the eternal Author of all.

Audubon has not only understood this harmony, in the midst of which he has lived, and whereof the music has re-echoed in the very deeps of his soul; but he has reproduced it in a style admirable for its simplicity, full of savor, of sap, of cloquence, and of sobriety. It is his glory!

More varied than Irving; more brilliant and pure than Fennimore Cooper, with him ceases what we may call the first literary epoch of the United States.

CHAPTER II.

OF POPULAR LITERATURE, AND OF THE LITERATURE SO CALLED, IN ENGLAND AND IN THE UNITED

STATES.

SECTION I.

INFANCY AND FUTURE OF AMERICA-AGE AND DESPAIR OF EUROPE HOW AMERICA IS INCESSANTLY PEOPLED BY THE SUPERABUNDANT POPULATION OF EUROPE-EMIGRÀTION AND COLONIZATION.

THERE is no spectacle equal to that of which the thought has a presentiment now; of which the certainty does not rost upon hypothesis, but on the inevitable development of factsthe spectacle of that America, that new Europe, which occupics so vast a space, from sea to sea, from Greenland to the Antilles. All civilization moves towards the displacement of human destinies, and every effort which we make to sustain and prolong our lives, turns to the profit of that great heir. of our wealth. The colonization of Canada, of which only a small part is occupied by the wrecks of French families, the wilds and forests of which are peopled by the British government with their poor, exported from Ireland and Scotland,

will aid the advance of this new civilization.

In less than a

century, all the colonists of those regions will speak English, and feel that there is a closer connection between them and the inhabitants of Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston, more affinities of neighborhood, commerce, necessity, and situation, that exists between them and the citizens of London. All will be confounded-even the Southern republics -in that cluster of which Washington is the centre. The two colonizing nations will be represented there, Catholic Spain and Protestant England. France will have no representative if it be not in some unnoticed corner near Quebec or Montreal.

This is the chastisement of that careless violence, of that unpausing impetuosity which has made us neglect our colonies. There was even a grave fault-say what you will-in our helping the insurgent American colonies against their metropolis. The statesmen of that day thought only of revenging themselves upon their enemy and satisfying their anti-Britannic rancor. They saw not what is hardly visible even yet; that the question was about Europe's own self; and that it related rather to a continent (in spite of universal opinion) about to obtain an orbicular preponderance, than to a partial rebellion against an unjust mother-country. By her adhesion to the cause of America, France deserted the causo of Europe; and in playing the second role in the strife she lost her American colonies, without gaining the least advan tage. This singular concurrence of human affairs, which none can deny, and none, save God, completely understand, has made that same American war sound not only the first victory-peal of the New World, but the first death-bell of the Old.

Then you saw the ancient institutions of Europe crumble, and the thrones were broken, yet the people could not build