The Bird

"Years and life's trials had deprived him of nothing; to his last hour he retained the vivacity, the aspirations, and even the charm of youth. Every one felt it without being ab...

For myself, I believe simply that this noble and pathetic hymn, with its lofty accent, is nought else but himself, his life of love and combat, his nightingale's drama. He behol...

Egypt does more for them; she reveres, she loves them. If the ancient worship no longer exists, they receive from men as kindly an hospitality as in the time of Pharaoh. Ask an...

Nothing appeared in sight, though a large town was close at hand, and a little river, the Erdre, wound under the hill, and from thence dragged itself towards the Loire. But this...

Their evident superiority over so great a number of birds is due to their longevity and to the experience which their excellent memory enables them to acquire and profit by. Ver...

But the lonely bird, which has neither the support of numbers nor of strength, what will become of him? What wilt thou do, poor solitary nightingale, which, like others of thy r...

Thus, the work is imprinted with a force of extraordinary will, of a passion singularly persevering. You see in it especially this fact, that it is not, like our works, prepared...

The eagle, then, is in these pages dethroned; the nightingale reigns in his stead. In that moral _crescendo_, where the bird continuously advances in self-culture, the apex and...

It is in his sunniest time, his first and richest existence, in his day-dreams of youth, that man has sometimes the good fortune to forget that he is a man, a slave to hard fate...

Then, then, Nature speaks to all--her potent voice troubles even the soul of sages. And why not? Is she not holy? And this surprising awakening, which has stirred life everywher...

Observe, moreover, that this strange being is gifted with the proud prerogative of fearing nothing in this world. Little, but strong and intrepid, he braves all the tyrants of t...

A tree externally sound, but rotten and corrupt within, is a terrible image for the patriot who dreams over the destinies of cities. Rome, at the epoch when the republic begun t...

This education is more or less arduous, according to the medium and the circumstances in which each species is placed. That of fishing, for instance, is simple enough for the pe...

Some presumed printer's errors were corrected. The following is a list of changes made from the original. The first line shows the original text; the second line is the correcte...

It is a matter of notoriety that the bustard has almost disappeared from Champagne and Provence. The heron has passed away; the stork is rare. As we gradually encroach upon the...

These great observers have one speciality which separates them from all others. Their feeling is so delicate, so precise, that no generalities could satisfy it; they must always...

An allusion will suffice. Antiquity in this special branch has bequeathed us the admirable patrimony which has supported the human race: the domestication of the dog, the horse,...

Ignorant persons, and no less those naturalists who study natural history in books only, acknowledge the differences existing between species, but believe that the actions and l...