A writer wrote the other day, 'People speak of the law of nature; but who feels it? There is no such emotion known in the ordinary life of the world.' The persons who will let their dinner wait whilst they watch a sunset fade over sea or moor, or who will leave the share list unread to see the morning dew make silver globes of the gossamer in the grass, are so few that they may almost be said not to exist, if we except a poet here, an artist there; and the sense of kinship with races not human can only come to those whose own kinship with earth and air and sky is strong enough to resist the dulling and debasing influences of artificial life, of life amongst men and their trivialities, frauds, and vanities.
'The sun is God,' said Turner, when he lay dying, and, alas! saw that sun only through the mists of London. But how many see the sun at all, even when they live where it is most radiant? How many think of the sun during the long day it illumines? The light is taken as a matter of course, as our breath is drawn through our lungs. There is no gratitude for it.
In similar manner there is no sense of kinship with the winged children of the air, with the four-footed dwellers beside us on the earth. Almost the only recognition we give them is maltreatment. At other times the indifference of our unspeakable fatuity rises in a dust cloud between us and them. Of gratitude for their companionship, their aid, their patience, their many virtues, there is not a trace in those who use them and abuse them, no more than there is gratitude for the beauty of the rose or the fragrance of the violet.
As 'the winds of March take the world with beauty,' every pasture and coppice is full of blossom, passed unnoticed by thousands in every daily country walk; so in the same manner do the multitudes trample down, and pass by, the ineffable charm and fragrance of disregarded affections, and unappreciated qualities, in the other races of earth.
Hang a poor woodland bird in a cage, if you can bear to look on such a captive, above a blossoming honeysuckle or hawthorn, and note his anguish of remembrance, his ecstasy of hope, his frantic effort to be free. But the accursed wires are between him and the familiar blossoms, between him and the blue sky; in a little while he realises that he is a prisoner; the fluttering joy goes out of his heart and his wings; his feathers grow ruffled and dull, his eyes are veiled, he sits motionless and heartbroken, and the breeze of the springtime blows past him, and never more will bear him on its buoyant way.