T was a frosty January morning when Aderyn I sat singing on a blackthorn. Aderyn was a

handsome young song-thrush, with a beautiful clear voice. The winter had been a severe one, and this was his first spring. The nest that came to him from his father was quite worn out, and let the wind in whatever direction in which it blew. He, knew, however, that summer days were coming, and so sat singing on his thorn and waited for the summer days-a thing which very few far wiser people are able to do with patience.

The weather began to be brighter and warmer, and in a few weeks Aderyn began to build a new house for himself. First he chose a thick bush, where the children who steal bird's-eggs could not easily find out his home. Then he built the sides of small twigs, filling up the space between with moss, and carefully fastened the whole together with bands of grass. Next came, within, a coat of other material from the pastures. After this he found an old log, and pecked from it some rotten wood; this he moistened in his bill and placed in a thin smooth layer all over the inside of the nest as its inner wall. The leaves overhead were the roof. Thus, you see, he had a very cosy home, into which neither wind nor rain could come.

The nest was in a large old wood, which covered a gentle slope, and here and there crossed the brook at the bottom, to go a few yards up the opposite slope. The brook rippled along all day with a pleasant sound, and tinkled over the big stones that lay in it like the chiming of little bells, to make tiny pools with the finest of sand at the bottom and scores of little water creatures running about on the top. At night it sang the birds softly to sleep, and in the morning clattered cheerily along till it wakened them up again.

When the weather was bright the flowers and birds and wind had concerts together, and very fine songs they sang too

"I enjoy," sings the thrush from the thicket; “Be happy,” rings the bluebell; "We are glad," rustle trees by the wicket; The rose cries, "I love thee well!"

But the finest times were on moonlight nights, when the children were all in bed and asleep and there was nobody to watch the flowers, when their garden cousins, even if they happened to be awake, were drowsy, and nodded their heads in the stupidest way, and when the daisies were all shut and the stars all open. Then indeed it was the flowers' playtime. They had the maddest pranks with each other, and were not even frightened of the Lady Birch, who was their governess.

But you must not think from this that the birds and flowers are idle. They have plenty of work to do, and only play when their work is done. In fact, if they had no work to do they could have very little play-or, at least, they might have a great deal of what they called play, but without anything else to do that would be only work under another name. The starling, for example, had to fly several miles away every morning to the pastures, to eat up the flies that troubled the cattle, to pick out the insects from the wool of the sheep, and to kill as many of Daddy Longlegs' fat little grubs as he could manage to get hold of. Aderyn, too, had to go at peep of day and catch snails for his breakfast, and it was very funny to see him take them up in his beak and break their shells against a handy stone, that he might pick out the soft white bodies. If snails were scarce, he had to look for early worms, or anything else eatable he could find. After this he flew to

a tree on the side of the turnpike road, opposite to the three cottages, and sang to the children to get up for school, saying as plainly as bird could, "Get up, get up, get up; are you ready? are you ready? we're goin,' we're goin,' we're goin.' If you think he could not say this so plainly, just listen to a thrush on a spring morn ing and you will hear him say exactly those words. Afterwards he hunted for more snails, and so, in one way or another, the busy day went by till evening.

And then, soon, as you know,-
"""Twas on the morn of Valentine

The birds began to prate,

Dame Durden's servants, maids and men,
They all began to mate."

I could tell you how one by one the birds and flowers mated; how the robin courted and won the bonny primrose; how the gentle ring-dove sang love-songs to the gentle violet; how the cuckoo wooed the cowslip, and on her death plighted with the little red-robin (or HerbRobert as he called her), and, his voice cracking in June, lived on his wife like a lazy vagabond as he was, and at length deserted her; and how even the nettle, on account of her riches, was attended by that vain little fop, the Vanessa butterfly; but with these we have nothing to do just now.

The thrush, for his part, did service to the dainty harebell, Alfmed, sweetest of all the field-flowers. The marriage-day was fixed, and all the guests invited, including even the oldfashioned relatives in the cottagers' gardens, gilly-flower, columbine, lavender, and the rest. But the hawthorn_interfered. May, the hawthorn, you must know, though a fair maid enough, had been a witch ever since the sage Merlin had been enchanted in her. Her wicked spells now overcame Aderyn's affection. Alfmed was left to droop wearily in her field, while Aderyn was listening to May's long stories of her history,-how she ought, of right, to be queen of the daisies as the moon was queen of the stars; how in olden times she was always carried before a bride in Greece; how the Romans always lighted the marriage-altar with her branches, and how a Turkish lover offered one of her blossoms as a bashful asking for a kiss. But her spells could not hold him bound for ever, and he was at length hastening back to Alfmed, when he suddenly saw at the end of the glade in front a new comer amid a chattering and admiring crowd. It was the delicate, wild rose. For the second time Alfmed was forgotten, and this time without any excusing spells save those of excitement and desire to overcome so many rivals.

One by one the other birds dropped off in

their attendance, even the blackbird thinking that he had no chance against the thrush, and Aderyn was left with only one rival, and he a foreigner, Usignuolo the nightingale. The one by day and the other by night sang their songs and told their tales to win notice from the rose.

The thrush sang: "It will soon be sunset. A maiden walks in the fields beyond the village. Why does she stay and touch her dress with careful hand? She is at the stile. Who is it meets her? She smiles in his face. It is her lover. See, they go on together. They are happy. O rose, be as happy with me!"

The nightingale sang : "I see a lake deeper and bluer than the sky. There are green hills and great white mountains all about it. I see beside the lake a palace of white marble, with many statues and flowers. It is now night. Two lovers walk on the terrace, and the moon shines in the lake. The lady sings a song, and it is all of love, love, love. This is her song; and he burst into a delicious trill that sounded all through the woods, and made the sleeping birds dream of the most beautiful things they could think of.

The rose could not make up her mind about the two rivals, until a third one came, a little bustling, important fellow-a widower, with a lot of children, and nothing at all romantic about him. He did not seem likely to have much chance against the other two, but it was soon seen that the rose listened to him much more kindly than to either of the others. The secret was that, as the wren, he was "king of the birds;" and ever since the Greeks had named his ancestor thus, more than two thousand years ago, his family had held the title all over Europe.

One day the rose was cooler than usual to Aderyn and his fellow-so cool that they both left her early in the morning, and went to the other end of the wood to mope. The very first thing next morning, after a night with a touch of frost in it, Mrs. Jay came to tell them all about the dancing and singing at the wren's marriage the night before. The two friends listened dejectedly. After the jay had gone on to tell her tale elsewhere, and to tell, too, how mournful the rose's other lovers looked, they determined to try to show themselves not quite crushed by disappointment, and to go with their wedding wishes to the false rose and her husband. They flew together to the rose-bush, but when they got there, lo, the rose was withered, and the wren had gone off in search of another bride. They were very sad for a little time. The first of the dead leaves fluttered down upon the grass. The sky grew cloudy. The nightingale said: "I will go back to my southern home, where there

"Ye birds that fly through fields of air,
What lessons of truth and wisdom ye bear.
Ye would teach our souls from the earth to rise,
Ye would bid us its grovelling scenes despise ;
Ye would tell us that all its pursuits are vain,
That pleasure is toil, ambition is pain;
That its bliss is touched with poisoning leaven,
Ye would teach us to fix our aim on Heaven.'

HE sparrow is a most familiar and wellknow bird; at all seasons of the year it is to be seen fluttering round our houses, streets, fields, and gardens.

Forty times over we read about the sparrow in the Bible; but in many places it would seem a sort of general name for a small bird, without meaning one in particular.

There are a great many birds of this kind in Palestine, more than in any country in the world of the same extent. Large numbers are killed and eaten, but still the race lives and thrives. There is no prohibition in the Levitical law against the use of any of the small birds as food; and from our Lord's observations, "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?" we may infer that at that day, as at the present, they were commonly sold and eaten.

"Two sparrows for one farthing, five for two,

The gain of one to him who buys the five." Plain little creatures, humbler never flew

Their way to death, and kept their name alive!

Forgive me! would I could undo the past;

In slighting you I did your Maker wrong, Oh, lowly people of the nations vast,

That populate the air with lowly song! Christ's sudden hand fell on me as He said Pointing a sparrow on the trodden road), "Not one of these but rests its little head

And finds in Providence its sure abode.

Not one that shuts its darkening eyes in death, But God, my God and yours, beholds it die; And gathers to His bosom all its breath,

And bears it ever in His memory."

O Master! Thou hast ope'd my faithless eyes, Shame to myself in humblest bird to read! Since God for it has ever full supplies,

He'll not forsake His children in their need!

Under the Levitical priesthood sparrows were among the offerings of the poor, and the sparrow is supposed to be the bird used as a sacrifice in the right of cleansing the leper (Lev. xiv. 4).

Like

Doubtless, that passage in Psalm lxxxiv., when David was driven from his throne and the sacred temple by the rebellion of his son Absalom, refers to this bird. The Psalmist seems to long to enjoy the privileges that even the little sparrows enjoyed, and evidently envied their position. Parkhurst has given a translation of the verse which removes some of the difficulties of the usual reading. "Even (as) the sparrow findeth her house, and the dove her nest where she had laid her young (so shall I find) Thine altars, O Jehovah of hosts, my King and my God." the swallow, the sparrow haunted the Temple, and it still thrusts its untidy nest, like a wisp of straw, into the crevices of the Mosque of Omar, just as it does into the water-pipes of our houses at home. And the five speckled eggs are laid, and the little sparrows are hatched, and the little mouths open, and the caterpillars drop into them in Palestine, the Holy Land, as well as in familiar, matter-of-fact England. And the table is spread for the little birds both here and there by a loving hand; and both here and there God takes thought for the smallest and weakest of his little ones.

Can

Our own house-sparrow is very common, especially in the seaport towns of Palestine. you fancy the plain, brown, pert, noisy little bird, chirping over Jerusalem or Bethlehem, and hopping about the streets so holy and sacred to our imagination?

The Spanish sparrow is more numerous still in the interior of the country; and in the valley of the Jordan their nests are so numerous on the thorn-trees that the boughs are quite weighed down with them.

Eastern houses often have upon their roofs swarms of sparrows, for, from the habits of the