Butler alludes to this accident in Hudibras,
where he says:

     The Roman senate, when within
     The city walls an owl was seen,
     Did cause their clergy with lustrations
     (Our synod calls humiliations)
     The round-fac'd prodigy t'  avert
     From doing town and country hurt.

This shows a bad feeling in the outset,
and the poets—whose true mission is peace
and good will, not the excitement of
animosity without cause—did their best to
increase it. Virgil and Ovid are conspicuous
for their ungentlemanlike statements with
respect to the Owl. The Negropontine exile
in his Fasti is particularly abusive, and
accuses them of flying about at night and
carrying off children from their nurse's arms,
and making very charnel houses of the palace
courts of the city. It is to this absurd and
malicious statement, no doubt, that Pennant
alludes when he tells us that "the ancients
believed that it (the owl) sucked the blood of
young children." To the surprise and regret
of every enlightened reader the same natu-
ralist goes on to observe: "a fact not incredible"
(he ought to have shown that it was a
fact), "for Hasselquist describes a species
found in Syria, which frequently in the evening
flies in at the windows and destroys the
helpless infants."

Neither can I acquit the very first poets of
our own country from something very like
ill-will towards Owls, in heedlessly adopting
the popular prejudice respecting the ill-luck
which their appearance is absurdly said to
announce. Chaucer, in his "Assembly of
Foules," says:

     The jelous Swan, ayenst hys deth that singeth,
     The Oule eke, that of deth the bode bringeth.

Nor is Spenser a whit more civil—or
truthful:

     The rueful Stritch still waiting on the beere,
     The whistler shrill, that whoso heares doth die.

The author of the Faëry Queen has a fling at
the bird of night in another place:

     The ill-faced owle, death's dreadful messenger.

"Why ill-faced? Can anything equal the
lustrous splendour of the owl's eyes? What
is more neatly arranged than his plumage?
Has any bird greater benignity of
countenance?

Marston, in Antonio and Mellida (sixteen
hundred and thirty-three), ominously
associates the owl with strange company:

     'Tis yet dead night, yet all the earth is cloucht
     In the dull leaden hand of snoring sleepe
     No breath disturbs the quiet of the aire,
     No spirit moves upon the breast of earth,
     Save howling dogs, night crowes, and screeching owles,
     Save meager ghosts, Piero, and blacke thoughts.

And another dramatist, in a play which, I
am happy to say, does not keep its ground on
the stage, observes:

     When screech owls croak upon the chimney tops,
     It's certain then you of a corse shall hear.

No doubt of it—when you do hear a screech-
owl croak.

The worst of which you can, with any show
of reason, accuse the owl—and this by no
means applies to the whole family—is a
disposition to loneliness; but who can object to
that, when, as the Persian poet Almocadessi
says, "The owl retires from the world knowing
the vanity of its enjoyments, and dedicates
herself to the contemplation of Divine
Wisdom, abandoning all beside"? How
many men are there, of our own acquaintance,
who habitually seclude themselves, whom we
know to be excellent fellows at heart, and
the very opposite to surly and disagreeable?
But there is an osteological fact, a token from
the hand of Nature, which at once sweeps
away all the calumnious rubbish about the
inherent tendency of the owl to melancholy.
Just examine his skeleton, or, if you can be
so brutal as to roast him, pick his bones: his
merrythought will convince you of his
naturally jovial disposition. What is called the
screech of the owl is, to any one who has
observed the habits of topers, a proof that he is
accustomed to take a good deal of liquor; and
his snoring—a thing well attested—is a
corroborative sign. On this point, Mr. Mike
Goldthred, the dainty mercer of Cumnor, furnishes
incontrovertible testimony, and if the song
in which he bestows his blessing upon the
jolly Owl were not too familiar to every
reader, I would give it here at full length.
Shakspeare, too, who now makes amends for
Lady Macbeth's mistake, and one or two
expressions made use of by his heroes, when
in dismal circumstances, is loud in praise of
the owl's character at the dreairiest period of
the year. Only read over that poetical
dialogue prepared for the edification of the
French Court by the renowned Don Adrian
de Armado, wherein the personage who
represents Hyems sings as follows:

     When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
     Then nightly sings the staring owl,
           To who?
     To whit! To who!—a merry note,
     While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

If you have not here the picture of a
cheerful fowl I know not where it is to be
found.

AN ORDEAL.

IN SIX CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

A FORTNIGHT had gone by. What a new-
hued time was this! What a wondrous
world revolved within the circle of the old
one. New life—new air—new warmth, light
and lustre. Although the days were shortening
towards the year's end, and sullen clouds
hid constantly the vault of heaven, and
sunshine came not through, and earth grew cold
in the shadow.