They swoop from side to side in the broad basin of the tree-tops, with wider and wider surges, as if swung by an invisible pendulum. They stoop down on this side and scale up on that. Suddenly I look up and see a new bird, probably an eagle, quite above me, laboring with the wind not more than forty rods off. It was the largest bird of the falcon kind I ever saw. I was never so impressed by any flight. She sailed the air, and fell back from time to time like a ship on her beam-ends, holding her talons up as if ready for the arrows. I never allowed before for the grotesque attitude of our national bird. The eagle must have an educated eye.
See what a life the gods have given us, set round with pain and pleasure. It is too strange for sorrow, it is too strange for joy. One while it looks as shallow, though as intricate as a Cretan labyrinth, and again it is a pathless depth. I ask for bread incessantly, that my life sustain me as much as meat my body. No man knoweth in what hour his life may come. Say not that nature is trivial, for to-morrow she will be radiant with beauty.
March 27, 1853. . . . . p. m. To Martial Miles's. . . . . The hazel is fully out. The 23d was perhaps full early to date them. It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, though so minute that only an observer of
