"The deep affections of the breast, That Heaven to living things imparts, Are not exclusively possessed By human hearts.
"A parrot from the Spanish Main, Full young, and early caged, came o'er With bright wings to the bleak domain Of Mulla's shore.
"To spicy groves where he had won His plumage of resplendent hue, His native fruits and skies and sun, He bade adieu.
"For these he changed the smoke of turf, A heathery land and misty sky, And turned on rocks and raging surf His golden eye.
"But, petted, in our climate cold He lived and chattered many a day, Until, with age, from green and gold His wings grew gray.
"At last, when, blind, and seeming dumb, He scolded, laughed, and spoke no more, A Spanish stranger chanced to come To Mulla's shore.
"He hailed the bird in Spanish speech; The bird in Spanish speech replied, Flapped round his cage with joyous screech, Dropped down, and died."
If perfect sunshine, gentle breezes, and a smooth sea could lure one into unconsciousness of the surrounding desolation and into forgetfulness of the elemental warfare to which these Hebridean regions are exposed, we had complete antidotes to melancholy or dread, so perfect was the day chosen for our excursion; and yet I never think of that part of our passage in which we threaded the islands lying north of Staffa without a gentle shade of sadness mingling with my recollections. But that the sage Johnson, the romantic Campbell, and the unreflecting parrot all indorse these emotions as instinctive, I should feel bound in honor (honor to the landscape) to ascribe them to that occasional thrill of homesickness which I have known take possession of me in the crowded streets of London or Edinburgh as well as here, making me inwardly exclaim, like the old woman from the wilds of Vermont, on her first visit to the metropolis, "All this may be very fine, but I wonder the folks can bear to live so far away."
That I was the victim of a momentary sense of exile is rendered the more probable from the fact that about this time Christie was stretched in the cabin below, a victim to sea-sickness, in spite of the comparatively smooth sea, and that the Bailie had gone forward to smoke a pipe, thus leaving me alone with my meditations. That they were not wholly of the regretful or sentimental cast is evident, however, from the fact that I improved this opportunity to indulge in more than one observation upon the company, my gossip (that is, my imagination) and I making many a little comment on my human surroundings, especially those three specimens of English girls whom, as I had met them once before, I was beginning to recognize as acquaintances.