EAGLES AND ART.
bird when in perfect repose emits a series of sounds resem-
bling considerably those produced by musical glasses under
the finger-it is strange to find this trait in the harsh family of
Raptorese-but it is not the less consistent with the unity in
apparent discord prevailing throughout Nature. These savage
despots of the air have all a harmony of their own!
Aye, in his solitary wandering the Artist makes the discov-
ery, that in the fitness of things the Eagle even may be consid-
ered a musical bird. His estimate of harmonious sounds is
comparative by necessity. When standing beside Niagara,
or when amidst savage mountains he scales the slippery
rocks that tremble to the sullen thunder-bass of cataracts,
leaping down dark-mouthed, jagged-gorges; then if he hear
the Eagle shout its shrill war-cry from out the spray-mist,
doth his heart leap up within him, for here those dissonant
notes best harmonize the dissonance!
Here, too, one glimpse of its warrior form as it comes forth
suddenly to view on steadied Lwings, cutting the span of the
perpetual iris in one imperial gleaming sweep of arrowy
flight, the Artist sees to be worth a life full of common
sights !-that the Old Mother has no grand show beyond this
one! The creature seems the embodied spirit of the place
-a winged desolation, born amidst the angry roar of mighty
forces, to spring forth glorious in fierce beauty from the mists
of their collision.
Of the stern wildness of all pathless solitudes the Eagle is
a part, and the Artist knows that in painting such scenes his
highest and noblest effects are produced by its presence.
Hence, apart from the necessity he has found for studying it
as the antitype of grandeur in humanity, he must do so as
the most perfect consummation of the wild sublime in land-
scape-in the moods, humors and conditions presented by
his mother.
Now, therefore, has he at length learned of her to look
upon the Eagle, not as the mere object of a technical curi-
osity, as an ornithological specimen, to be measured, skinned,
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