Elijah in the wilderness."

"The raven? No," said the virtuoso; "it is a bird of modern date.
He belonged to one Barnaby Rudge, and many people fancied that the
Devil himself was disguised under his sable plumage. But poor Grip
has drawn his last cork, and has been forced to 'say die' at last.
This other raven, hardly less curious, is that in which the soul of
King George I. revisited his lady-love, the Duchess of Kendall."

My guide next pointed out Minerva's owl and the vulture that preyed
upon the liver of Prometheus. There was likewise the sacred ibis of
Egypt, and one of the Stymphalides which Hercules shot in his sixth
labor. Shelley's skylark, Bryant's water-fowl, and a pigeon from
the belfry of the Old South Church, preserved by N. P. Willis, were
placed on the same perch. I could not but shudder on beholding
Coleridge's albatross, transfixed with the Ancient Mariner's
crossbow shaft. Beside this bird of awful poesy stood a gray goose
of very ordinary aspect.

"Stuffed goose is no such rarity," observed I. "Why do you preserve
such a specimen in your museum?"

"It is one of the flock whose cackling saved the Roman Capitol,"
answered the virtuoso. "Many geese have cackled and hissed both
before and since; but none, like those, have clamored themselves
into immortality."

There seemed to be little else that demanded notice in this
department of the museum, unless we except Robinson Crusoe's parrot,
a live phoenix, a footless bird of paradise, and a splendid peacock,