out, like Jacques, "More, more, I prythee, more," have even an irritating effect. Indeed, if this were always so it would be a serious drawback, even to a song so full of excellence. But it is not always so. Sometimes, on still, warm nights when the stars seem to breathe and tremble and the air is like a lazy kiss (and if nights are not like this in England, yet the song itself makes them seem so), the rich, full notes are poured forth in a continuous stream of melody that lasts long, and, whilst it lasts, seems to create the world afresh. Some time afterwards, indeed, one notices that the effect has not been quite so powerful, and that this crying want has still to be filled—but the dear bird has done its best.
"Sie jubelt so traurig, sie schluchzet so froh,
Vergessene Traüme erwachen,"
says Heine, whilst others say that the song is apt to keep them awake at night, and, having first paid their orthodox tribute to its supremacy over every other, will confess that they have sometimes been obliged to open the window and throw something out to put a stop to it. Yet the thought of how appreciative the world really is, and how severely a heretic in such a matter may be dealt with, shall not deter me from expressing a slight doubt as to the reality of this supremacy—or, at least, of its extent and absoluteness. Letters each year to the papers, from people who have been so fortunate as to hear the nightingale long before the nightingale is accustomed to reach our shores, have given rise to the suspicion that a thrush is, in most cases, the real performer; and if this be so, it shows that, with many, the comparative merits of the two depend upon
