of the Pedlar-as he is elaborately painted by the hand of a great master in the aforesaid Poem.

"Him had I mark'd the day before-alone,

And station'd in the public way, with face

Turn'd to the sun then setting, while that staff
Afforded to the figure of the man,

Detain'd for contemplation or repose,
Graceful support," &c.

As if it were yesterday, we remember our first interview with the Bard. It was at the Lady's Oak, between Ambleside and Rydal. We were then in the very flower of our age-just sixty; so we need not say the century had then seen but little of this world. The Bard was a mere boy of some six lustres, and had a lyrical ballad look that established his identity at first sight, all unlike the lack-a-daisical. His right hand was within his vest on the region of the heart, and he ceased his crooning as we stood face to face. What a noble countenance! at once austere and gracious-haughty and benign-of a man conscious of his greatness while yet companioning with the humble—an unrecognized power dwelling in the woods. Our figure at that moment so impressed itself on his imagination, that it in time supplanted the image of the real Pedlar, and grew into the Emeritus of the Three Days. We were standing in that very attitude-having deposited on the coping of the wall our Kit, since adopted by the British Army, with us at once a library and a larder.

And again—and even more characteristically

"Plain was his garb :

Such as might suit a rustic sire, prepared

For Sabbath duties; yet he was a man

Whom no one could have pass'd without remark.
Active and nervous was his gait; his limbs
And his whole figure breathed intelligence.
Time had compress'd the freshness of his cheeks
Into a narrower circle of deep red,

But had not tamed his eye, that under brows,
Shaggy and grey, had meanings, which it brought
From years of youth; whilst, like a being made
Of many beings, he had wondrous skill

To blend with knowledge of the years to come,
Human, or such as lie beyond the grave."

In our intellectual characters we indulge the pleasing hope that there are some striking points of resemblance, on which, however, our modesty will not permit us to dwell-and in our acquirements, more particularly in Plane and Spherical Trigonometry.

"While yet he linger'd in the rudiments
Of science, and among her simplest laws,
His triangles-they were the stars of heaven.
The silent stars! oft did he take delight
To measure the altitude of some tall crag,
That is the eagle's birthplace," &c.

So it was with us. Give us but a base and a quadrant —and when a student in Jemmy Millar's class, we could have given you the altitude of any steeple in Glasgow or the Gorbals.

Occasionally, too, in a small party of friends, though not proud of the accomplishment, we have been prevailed on, as you may have heard, to delight humanity with a song "The Flowers of the Forest," "Roy's Wife," "Flee up, flee up, thou bonnie bonnie Cock," or " Auld Langsyne"-just as the Pedlar

"At request would sing

Old songs, the product of his native hills;
A skilful distribution of sweet sounds,
Feeding the soul, and eagerly imbibed
As cool refreshing water, by the care

Of the industrious husbandman diffused

Through a parch'd meadow field in time of drought."

Our natural disposition, too, is as amiable as that of the "Vagrant Merchant.”

"And surely never did there live on earth
A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports
And teasing ways of children vex'd not him:
Indulgent listener was he to the tongue
Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale,
To his fraternal sympathy address'd,

Obtain reluctant hearing."

Who can read the following lines, and not think of Christopher North?

"Birds and beasts,

And the mute fish that glances in the stream,
And harmless reptile coiling in the sun,

And gorgeous insect hovering in the air,
The fowl domestic, and the household dog-
In his capacious mind he loved them all."

True, that our love of

"The mute fish that glances in the stream,"

is not incompatible with the practice of the "angler's silent trade," or with the pleasure of "filling our pannier." The Pedlar, too, we have reason to know, was like his poet and ourselves, in that art a craftsman, and for love beat the molecatcher at busking a batch of May-flies. We question whether Lascelles himself

"The harmless

were his master at a green dragon. reptile coiling in the sun" we are not so sure about, having once been bit by an adder, whom in our simplicity we mistook for a slow-worm-the very day, by the by, on which we were poisoned by a dish of toadstools, by our own hand gathered for mushrooms. But we have long given over chasing butterflies, and feel, as the Pedlar did, that they are beautiful creatures, and that 'tis a sin between finger and thumb to compress their mealy wings. The household dog we do indeed dearly love, though when old Surly looks suspicious we prudently keep out of the reach of his chain. As for "the domestic fowl," we breed scores every spring, solely for the delight of seeing them at their walks,

"Among the rural villages and farms;"

and though game to the back-bone, they are allowed to wear the spurs nature gave them-to crow unclipped, challenging but the echoes; nor is the sward, like the sod, ever reddened with their heroic blood, for hateful to our ears the war-song,

"Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory!"

'Tis our way, you know, to pass from gay to grave matter, and often from a jocular to a serious view of the same subject-it being natural to us-and having become habitual too, from our writing occasionally in Blackwood's Magazine. All the world knows our admiration of Wordsworth, and admits that we have done almost as much as

Jeffrey or Taylor to make his poetry popular among the "educated circles." But we are not a nation of idolaters, and worship neither graven image nor man that is born of a woman. We may seem to have treated the Pedlar with insufficient respect in that playful parallel between him and Ourselves; but there you are wrong again, for we desire thereby to do him honour. We wish now to say a few words on the wisdom of making such a personage the chief character in a Philosophical Poem.

He is described as endowed by nature with a great intellect, a noble imagination, a profound soul, and a tender heart. It will not be said that nature keeps these her noblest gifts for human beings born in this or that condition of life: she gives them to her favourites— for so, in the highest sense, they are to whom such gifts befall; and not unfrequently, in an obscure place, of one of the FORTUNATI

"The fulgent head

Star-bright appears."

Wordsworth appropriately places the birth of such a being in a humble dwelling in the Highlands of Scotland.

66 Among the hills of Athol he was born;
Where on a small hereditary farm,

An unproductive slip of barren ground,

His parents, with their numerous offspring, dwelt ;
A virtuous household, though exceeding poor."

His childhood was nurtured at home in Christian love and truth-and acquired other knowledge at a winter