Of the industrious husbandman diffused Through a parch'd meadow field in time of Our natural disposition, too, is as amiable as "And surely never did there live on earth A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale, dom 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 Who can read the following lines, and not obscure place, of one of the FORTUNATI think of Christopher North? "Birds and beasts, And the mute fish that glances in the stream, True, that our love of "The fulgent head Star-bright appears,' Wordsworth appropriately places the birth of "Among the hills of Athol he was born; 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 school; for in summer he "tended cattle on the hill" "That stood Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge." And the influence of such education and occupation among such natural objects, Wordsworth expounds in some as fine poetry as ever issued from the cells of philosophic thought. "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 were his master at a green dragon. "The harmless 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 in- But in the Manse there were books-and he deed 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 themto 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 wis "So the foundations of his mind were laid." The boy had small need of books read "For many a tale "Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied, Can you not believe that by the time he was as old as you were when you used to ride to the races on a pony, by the side of your sire the Squire, this boy was your equal in knowledge, though you had a private tutor all to yourself, and were then a promising lad, as indeed you are now after the lapse of a quarter of a century? True, as yet he "had small Latin and no Greek;" but the elements of these languages may be learned-trust usby slow degrees-by the mind rejoicing in the consciousness of its growing faculties-during leisure hours from other studies-as they were by the Athol adolescent. A Scholar-in your sense of the word-he might not be called, even when he had reached his seventeenth year, though probably he would have puzzled you in Livy and Virgil; nor of English poetry had he read much-the less the better for such a mind-at that age, and in that conditionfor "Accumulated feelings press'd his heart With still increasing weight; he was o'erpower'd But he had read Poetry-ay, the same Poetry that Wordsworth's self read at the same age | artificial society; and in ten thousand cases, -and the youth was greater than he knew;" yet that there was something great in, as well as about him, he felt "Thus daily thirsting in that lonesome life," for some diviner communication than had yet been vouchsafed to him by the Giver and Inspirer of his restless Being. "In dreams, in study, and in ardent thought, Thus was he rear'd; much wanting to assist And every moral feeling of his soul "Is summon'd to select the course For a season he taught a village school, which "That stern yet kindly spirit, who constrains where the heart of such society was happily sound at the core, notwithstanding the rotten kitchen-stuff with which it was incrusted, the shocks have killed the prejudices; and men and women, encouraged to consult their own breasts, have heard responses there to the truths uttered in music by the high-souled Bard, assuring them of an existence there of capacities of pure delight, of which they had had either but a faint suspicion, or, because "of the world's dread laugh," feared to in dulge, and nearly let die. Mr. Wordsworth quotes from Heron's Scotland an interesting passage, illustrative of the life led in our country at that time by that class of persons from whom he has chosen one-not, mind you, imaginary, though for purposes of imagination-adding that "his own personal knowledge emboldened him to draw the portrait." In that passage Heron says, "As they wander, each alone, through thinly inhabited districts, they form habits of reflection and of sublime contemplation,” and that, with all their qualifications, no wonder they should contribute much to polish the roughness and soften the rusticity of our peasantry. "In North America," he says, "travel ling merchants from the settlements have done and continue to do much more towards civiliz ing the Indian natives than all the missiona ries, Papist or Protestant, who have ever been sent among them;" and, speaking again of Scotland, he says, "it is not more than twenty or thirty years, since a young man going from It had become his duty to choose a profession any part of Scotland to England for the —a trade-a calling. He was not a gentle-purpose to carry the pack, was considered as man, mind ye, and had probably never so much as heard a rumour of the existence of a silver fork: he had been born with a wooden spoon in his mouth—and had lived, partly from choice and partly from necessity, on a vegetable diet. He had not ten pounds in the world he could call his own; but he could borrow fifty, for his father's son was to be trusted to that amount by any family that chanced to have it among the Athol hills-therefore he resolved on "a hard service," which "Gain'd merited respect in simpler times; going to lead the life, and acquire the fortune of a gentleman. When, after twenty years' absence in that honourable line of employment, he returned with his acquisitions to his native country, he was regarded as a gentleman to all intents and purposes." We have ourselves known gentlemen who had carried the pack-one of them a man of great talents and acquirements-who lived in his old age in the highest circles of society. Nobody troubled their head about his birth and parentage-for he was then very rich; but you could not sit ten he was one of God Almighty's gentlemen," belonging to the "aristocracy of Nature." When squire, and priest, and they who round them minutes in his company without feeling that dwelt | In rustic sequestration, all dependent Upon the PEDLAR'S toil, supplied their wants, Or pleased their fancies with the ware he brought. You have heard, we hope, of Alexander Would Alfred have ceased to be Alfred had Wilson, the illustrious Ornithologist, second he lived twenty years in the hut where he not even to Audubon-and sometimes absurdspoiled the bannocks? Would Gustavus have ly called the Great American Ornithologist, ceased to be Gustavus had he been doomed to because with pen and pencil he painted in dree an ignoble life in the obscurest nook in colours that will never die-the Birds of the Dalecarlia ? Were princes and peers in our New World. He was a weaver-a Paisley day degraded by working, in their expatria- weaver-a useful trade, and a pleasant place tion, with head or hand for bread? Are the where these now dim eyes of ours first saw Polish patriots degraded by working at eighteen the light. And Sandy was a pedlar. Hear his pence a day, without victuals, on embankments words in an autobiography unknown to the of railroads? "At the risk of giving a shock Bard:-"I have this day, I believe, measured | to the prejudices of artificial society, I have the height of an hundred stairs, and explored ever been ready to pay homage to the aristo- the recesses of twice that number of miseracracy of nature, under a conviction that vigor-ble habitations; and what have I gained by ous human-heartedness is the constituent prin- it ?-only two shillings of worldly pelf! but an ciple of true taste." These are Wordsworth's invaluable treasure of observation. in this own words, and deserve letters of gold. He elegant dome, wrapt up in glittering silks, and has given many a shock to the prejudices of stretched on the downy sofa, recline the fair both saw and have spoken truth. Most small packmen were then, in some measure, what Wilson says they were generally esteemed to be-peddling pilferers, and insignificant swindlers. Poverty sent them swarming over bank and brae, and the "sma' kintra touns"and for a plack people will forget principle who have, as we say in Scotland, missed the world. Wilson knew that to a man like himself there was degradation in such a calling; and he latterly vented his contemptuous sense of it, exaggerating the baseness of the name and nature of packman. But suppose such a man as Wilson to have been in better times one of but a few packmen travelling regularly for years over the same country, each with his own district or domain, and there can be no doubt that he would have been an object both of interest and of respect daughters of wealth and indolence-the ample | all ranks entertain of them is, that they are mirror, flowery floor, and magnificent couch, mean-spirited loquacious liars, cunning and their surrounding attendants; while, suspended illiterate, watching every opportunity, and in his wiry habitation above, the shrill-piped using every mean art within their power, to canary warbles to enchanting echoes. Within cheat." This is a sad account of the estithe confines of that sickly hovel, hung round mation in which a trade was then held in with squadrons of his brother-artists, the pale- Scotland, which the greatest of our living poets faced weaver plies the resounding lay, or has attributed to the chief character in a poem launches the melancholy murmuring shuttle. comprehensive of philosophical discussions Lifting his simple latch, and stooping for en- on all the highest interests of humanity. But trance to the miserable hut, there sits poverty | both Wilson and Wordsworth are in the right: and ever-moaning disease, clothed in dunghill rags, and ever shivering over the fireless chimney. Ascending this stair, the voice of joy bursts on my ear-the bridegroom and bride, surrounded by their jocund companions, circle the sparkling glass and humorous joke, or join in the raptures of the noisy dance-the squeaking fiddle breaking through the general uproar in sudden intervals, while the sounding floor groans beneath its unruly load. Leaving these happy mortals, and ushering into this silent mansion, a more solemn-a striking object presents itself to my view. The windows, the furniture, and every thing that could lend one cheerful thought, are hung in solemn white; and there, stretched pale and lifeless, lies the awful corpse, while a few weeping friends sit, black and solitary, near the breathless clay. In this other place, the fearless sons of Bacchus extend their brazen throats, in shouts like bursting thunder, to the praise of their gorgeous chief. Opening this door, the lonely matron explores, for consolation, her Bible; and in this house the wife brawls, the children shriek, and the poor husband bids me depart, lest his termagant's fury should vent itself on me. In short, such an inconceivable variety daily occurs to my observation in real life, that would, were they moralized upon, convey more maxims of wisdom, and give a juster knowledge of mankind, than whole volumes of Lives and Adventures, that perhaps never had a being except in the prolific brains of their fantastic authors." At a subsequent period he retraced his steps, taking with him copies of his poems to distribute among subscribers, and endeavour to promote a more extensive circulation. Of this excursion also he has given an account in his journal, from which it appears that his success was far from encouraging. Among amusing incidents, sketches of character, occasional sound and intelligent remarks upon the manners and prospects of the common classes of society into which he found his way, there are not a few severe expressions indicative of deep disappointment, and some that merely bespeak the keener pangs of the wounded pride founded on conscious merit. You," says he, on one occasion, "whose souls are susceptible of the finest feelings, who are elevated to rapture with the least dawnings of hope, and sunk into despondency with the slightest thwartings of your expectationsthink what I felt." Wilson himself attributed his ill fortune, in his attempts to gain the humble patronage of the poor for his poetical pursuits, to his occupation. "A packman is a character which none esteems, and almost every one despises. The idea that people of his opportunities of seeing the very best and the very happiest of humble life, in itself very various, would have been very great; and with his original genius, he would have become, like Wordsworth's Pedlar, a good moral Philosopher. Without, therefore, denying the truth of his picture of packmanship, we may believe the truth of a picture entirely the reverse, from the hand and heart of a still wiser man-though his wisdom has been gathered from less immediate contact with the coarse garments and clay floors of the labouring poor. It is pleasant to hear Wordsworth speak of his own "personal knowledge" of packmen or pedlars. We cannot say of him in the words of Burns," the fient a pride, nae pride had he;" for pride and power are brothers on earth, whatever they may prove to be in heaven. But his prime pride is his poetry; and he had not now been "sole king of rocky Cumberland," had he not studied the character of his subjects in "huts where poor men lie"-had he not "stopped his anointed head" beneath the doors of such huts, as willingly as he ever raised it aloft, with all its glorious laurels, in the palaces of nobles and princes. Yes, the inspiration he "derived from the light of setting suns,' was not so sacred as that which often kindled within his spirit all the divinity of Christian man, when conversing charitably with his brother-man, a wayfarer on the dusty highroad, or among the green lanes and alleys of merry England. You are a scholar, and love poetry? Then here you have it of the finest, and will be sad to think that heaven had not made you a pedlar. "In days of yore how fortunately fared Now meeting on his road an armed Knight, Now resting with a Pilgrim by the side Of a clear brook ;-beneath an Abbey's roof Or with some merry Outlaws of the wood; Yet not the noblest of that honour'd Race Drew happier, loftier, more empassion'd thoughts To gather, ranging through the tamer ground Both while he trode the earth in humblest guise, "What wonder, then, if I, whose favourite School -Nor was he loath to enter ragged huts, Huts where his charity was blest; his voice Heard as the voice of an experienced friend. And, sometimes, where the Poor Man held dispute With his own mind, unable to subdue Impatience, through inaptness to perceive General distress in his particular lot; Or cherishing resentment, or in vain Struggling against it, with a soul perplex'd, And finding in herself no steady power To draw the line of comfort that divides Calamity, the chastisement of Heaven, From the injustice of our brother men; To him appeal was made as to a judge; Who, with an understanding heart, allay'd The perturbation; listen'd to the plea; Resolved the dubious point; and sentence gave So grounded, so applied, that it was heard With softened spirit-e'en when it condemn'd.” What was to hinder such a man-thus born and thus bred—with such a youth and such a prime-from being in his old age worthy of walking among the mountains with Wordsworth, and descanting "On man, on nature, and on human life?" And remember he was a Scotsman-compatriot of CHRISTOPHER NORTH. What would you rather have had the Sage in the Excursion to have been? The Senior Fellow of a College? A Head? A retired Judge? An An Ex-Lord Chancellor ? A Nabob? A Banker? A Millionaire ? or, at once to condescend on individuals, Natus Consumere Fruges, Esquire? or the Honourable Custos Rotulorum ? You have read, bright bold neophyte, the Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, upon the restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the estates and honours of his ancestors? "Who is he that bounds with joy On Carrock's side, a shepherd boy? In secret, like a smother'd flame? For whom such thoughtful tears were shed "The Boy must part from Mosedale groves Sir Launcelot Threlkeld shelters him till again he is free to set his foot on the mountains. 66 Again he wanders forth at will, So lives he till he is restored "Glad were the vales, and every cottage hearth; The shepherd-lord was honour'd more and more; And, ages after he was laid in earth, "The good Lord Clifford' was the name he bore!" Now mark-that Poem has been declared by one and all of the "Poets of Britain" to be equal to any thing in the language; and its greatness lies in the perfect truth of the profound philosophy which so poetically delineates the education of the naturally noble character of Clifford. Does he sink in our esteem because at the Feast of the Restoration he turns a deaf ear to the fervent harper who sings, "Happy day and happy the hour, When our shepherd in his power, Mounted, mail'd, with lance and sword, To his ancestors restored, Like a re-appearing star, Like a glory from afar, First shall head the flock of war?” No-his generous nature is true to its generous nurture; and now deeply imbued with the goodness he had too long loved in others ever to forget, he appears noblest when showing himself faithful in his own hall to the "huts where poor men lie;" while we know not, at the solemn close, which life the Poet has most glorified-the humble or the highwhether the Lord did the Shepherd more ennoble, or the Shepherd the Lord. Now, we ask, is there any essential difference between what Wordsworth thus records of the high-born Shepherd-Lord in the Feast of Brougham Castle, and what he records of the low-born Pedlar in the Excursion? None. They are both educated among the hills; and according to the nature of their own souls and that of their education, is the progressive growth and ultimate formation of their character. Both are exalted beings-because both are wise and good-but to his own coeval he has given, besides eloquence and genius, that's "The vision and the faculty divine,” "When years had brought the philosophic mind" he might walk through the dominions of the Intellect and the Imagination, a Sage and a Teacher. Look into life, and watch the growth of character. Men are not what they seem to the outward eye-mere machines moving about in customary occupations-productive labourers of food and wearing apparel-slaves from Who but the same noble boy whom his high- morn to night at taskwork set them by the born mother in disastrous days had confided Wealth of Nations. They are the Children when an infant to the care of a peasant. Yet of Yet of God. The soul never sleeps-not even there he is no longer safe-and when its wearied body is heard snoring by K people living in the next street. All the souls | nevis, Helvellyn in England, in Ireland the now in this world are for ever awake; and this life, believe us, though in moral sadness it has often been rightly called so, is no dream. In a dream we have no will of our own, no power over ourselves; ourselves are not felt to be ourselves; our familiar friends seem strangers from some far off country; the dead are alive, yet we wonder not; the laws of the physical world are suspended, or changed, or confused by our fantasy; Intellect, Imagination, the Moral Sense, Affection, Passion, are not possessed by us in the same way we possess them out of that mystery: were life a Dream, or like a Dream, it would never lead to Heaven. Again, then, we say to you, look into life and watch the growth of character. In a world where the ear cannot listen without hearing the clank of chains, the soul may yet be free as if it already inhabited the skies. For its Maker gave it LIBERTY OF CHOICE OF GOOD OR OF EVIL; and if it has chosen the good it is a King. All its faculties are then fed on their appropriate food provided for them in nature. It then knows where the necessaries and the luxuries of its life grow, and how they may be gathered-in a still sunny region inaccessible to blight-"no mildewed ear blasting his wholesome brother." In the beautiful language of our friend Aird "And thou shalt summer high in bliss upon the Hills of Go, read the EXCURSION then-venerate the Reeks; and you see that they are mere mole- "High from the summit of a craggy cliff Unstain'd he holds, while many a league to sea So charmed have we been with the sound of our own voice-of all sounds on earth the sweetest surely to our ears—and, therefore, we so dearly love the monologue, and from the dialogue turn averse, impatient of him ycleped the interlocutor, who, like a shallow brook, will keep prattling and babbling on between the still deep pools of our discourse, which nature feeds with frequent waterfalls-so charmed have we been with the sound of our own voice, that scarcely conscious the while of more than a gentle ascent along the sloping sward of a rural Sabbath day's journey, we perceive now that we must have achieved a Yet an Eagle we are, and therefore proud of Highland league-five miles-of rough uphill You our Scottish mountains, as you are of Us. work, and are standing tiptoe on the Mountain- Stretch yourself up to your full height as we top. True that his altitude is not very great-now do to ours-and let "Andes, giant of the somewhere, we should suppose, between two and three thousand feet-much higher than the Pentlands-somewhat higher than the Ochils —a middle-sized Grampian. Great painters and poets know that power lies not in mere measurable bulk. Atlas, it is true, is a giant, and he has need to be so, supporting the globe. So is Andes; but his strength has never been put to proof, as he carries but clouds. The Cordilleras-but we must not be personal-so | suffice it to say, that soul, not size, equally in mountains and in men, is and inspires the true sublime. Mont Blanc might be as big again; but what then, if without his glaciers? These mountains are neither immense nor enormous-nor are there any such in the British Isles. Look for a few of the highest on Riddell's ingenious Scale-in Scotland Ben Western Star," but dare to look at us, and we will tear the "meteor standard to the winds unfurled" from his cloudy hands. There you stand-and were you to rear your summits much higher into heaven you would alarm the hidden stars. Yet we have seen you higher-but it was in storm. In calm like this, you do well to look beautiful-your solemn altitude suits the sunny season, and the peaceful sky. But when the thunder at mid-day would hide your heads in a night of cloud, you thrust them through the blackness, and show them to the glens, crowned with fire. Are they a sea of mountains! No-they are mountains in a sea. And what a sea! Waves of water, when at the prodigious, are never higher than the foretop of a man-of-war. Waves |