Chapter 12

"Amid the gloom,Spread by a brotherhood of lofty elms,Appear'd a roofless hut; four naked wallsThat stared upon each other! I look'd round,And to my wish and to my hope espiedHim whom I sought; a man of reverend age,But stout and hale, for travel unimpair'd.There was he seen upon the cottage bench,Recumbent in the shade, as if asleep;An iron-pointed staff lay at his side."

Alas! "stout and hale" are words that could not be applied, without cruel mocking, to our figure. "Recumbent in the shade" unquestionably he is—yet, "recumbent" is a clumsy word for such quietude; and, recurring to our former image, we prefer to say, in the words of Wilson,—

"Still is he as a frame of stoneThat in its stillness lies alone,With silence breathing from its face,For ever in some holy place,Chapel or aisle—on marble laid,With pale hands on his pale breast spread,An image humble, meek, and low,Of one forgotten long ago!"

No "iron-pointed staff lies at his side"—but "Satan's dread,"the Crutch! Wordsworth tells us over again that the Pedlar—

"With no appendage but a staff,The prized memorial ofrelinquish'dtoils,Upon the cottage-bench reposed his limbs,Screen'd from the sun."

On his couch, in his Alcove, Christopher is reposing—not his limbs alone, but his very essence.The Crutchis, indeed, bothde jureandde factothe prized memorial of toils—but, thank Heaven, notrelinquishedtoils; and then how characteristic of the dear merciless old man—hardly distinguishable among the fringed draperies of his canopy, the dependent and independentKnout!

Was the Pedlar absolutely asleep? We shrewdly suspect not—'twas but a doze. "Recumbent in the shade,as if asleep"—"Upon that cottage-benchreposedhis limbs" induce us to lean to the opinion that he was but on the border of the Land of Nod. Nay, the poet gets more explicit, and with that minute particularity so charming in poetical description, finally informs us that

"Supine the wanderer lay,His eyes, as if in drowsiness, half shut,The shadows of the breezy elms aboveDappling his face."

It would appear, then, on an impartial consideration of all the circumstances of the case, that the "man of reverend age," though "recumbent" and "supine" upon the "cottage bench," "as if asleep," and "his eyes, as if in drowsiness, half shut," was in a mood between sleeping and waking; and this creed is corroborated by the following assertion—

"He had not heard the soundOf my approaching steps, and in the shadeUnnoticed did I stand some minutes' space.At length I hail'd him, seeing that his hatWas moist with water-drops, as if the brimHad newly scoop'd a running stream."

He rose; and so do We, for probably by this time you may have discovered that we have been describing Ourselves in our siesta or mid-day snooze—as we have been beholding in our mind's eye our venerated and mysterious Double.

We cannot help flattering ourselves—if indeed it be flattery—that though no relative of his, we have a look 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, faceTurn'd to the sun then setting, while that staffAfforded 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 lackadaisical. 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 unrecognised 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 theEmeritus 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, preparedFor Sabbath duties; yet he was a manWhom no one could have pass'd without remark,Active and nervous was his gait; his limbsAnd his whole figure breathed intelligence.Time had compress'd the freshness of his cheeksInto a narrower circle of deep red,But had not tamed his eye, that under brows,Shaggy and grey, had meanings, which it broughtFrom years of youth; whilst, like a being madeOf many beings, he had wondrous skillTo 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 incur acquirements, more particularly in Plane and Spherical Trigonometry:—

"While yet he linger'd in the rudimentsOf science, and among her simplest laws,His triangles—they were the stars of heaven,The silent stars! oft did he take delightTo 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 singOld songs, the product of his native hills;A skilful distribution of sweet sounds,Feeding the soul, and eagerly imbibedAs cool refreshing water, by the careOf the industrious husbandman diffusedThrough 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 earthA man of kindlier nature. The rough sportsAnd teasing ways of children vex'd not him:Indulgent listener was he to the tongueOf 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 mole-catcher 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 indeed dearly love, though when old Surly looks suspicions 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 theirwalks

"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 thesod, 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 inBlackwood's Magazine. Allthe 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 theFortunati

"The fulgent headStar-bright appears."

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

"Among the hills of Atholl 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 school; for in summer he "tended cattle on the hill,"—

"that stoodSole 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.

"So the foundations of his mind were laid."

The boy had small need of books—

"For many a taleTraditionary, round the mountains hung,And many a legend, peopling the dark woods,Nourish'd Imagination in her growth,And gave the mind that apprehensive powerBy which she is made quick to recogniseThe moral properties and scope of things."

But in the Manse there were books—and he read

"Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied,The life and death of martyrs, who sustain'd,With will inflexible, those fearful pangs,Triumphantly display'd in records leftOf persecution and the Covenant."

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 us—by slow degrees—by the mind rejoicing in the consciousness of its growing faculties—during leisure hours from other studies—as they were by the Atholl 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 condition—for

"Accumulated feelings press'd his heartWith still increasing weight; he was o'erpower'dBy nature, by the turbulence subduedOf his own mind, by mystery and hope,And the first virgin passion of a soulCommuning with the glorious Universe."

But he had read Poetry—ay, the same Poetry that Wordsworth's self read at the same age—and

"Among the hillsHe gazed upon that mighty Orb of Song,The divine Milton."

Thus endowed, and thus instructed,

"By Nature, that did never yet betrayThe heart that loved her,"

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 assistThe growth of intellect, yet gaining more,And every moral feeling of his soulStrengthen'd and braced, by breathing in contentThe keen, the wholesome air of poverty,And drinking from the well of homely life."

But he is in his eighteenth year, and

"Is summon'd to select the courseOf humble industry that promised bestTo yield him no unworthy maintenance."

For a season he taught a village school, which many a fine, high, and noble spirit has done and is doing; but he was impatient of the hills he loved, and

"That stern yet kindly spirit, who constrainsThe Savoyard to quit his native rocks,The free-born Swiss to leave his narrow vales(Spirit attach'd to regions mountainousLike their own steadfast clouds), did now impelHis restless mind to look abroad with hope."

It had become his duty to choose a profession—a trade—a calling. He was not a gentleman, 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 Atholl hills—therefore he resolved on "a hard service," which

"Gain'd merited respect in simpler times;When squire, and priest, and they who round them dweltIn rustic sequestration, all dependentUpon thePedlar'stoil, supplied their wants,Or pleased their fancies with the ware he brought.

Would Alfred have ceased to be Alfred had he lived twenty years in the hut where he spoiled the bannocks? Would Gustavus have ceased to be Gustavus had he been doomed to dree an ignoble life in the obscurest nook in Dalecarlia? Were princes and peers in our day degraded by working, in their expatriation, with head or hand for bread? Are the Polish patriots degraded by working at eighteenpence a-day, without victuals, on embankments of railroads? "At the risk of giving a shock to the prejudices of artificial society, I have ever been ready to pay homage to the aristocracy of nature, under a conviction that vigorous human-heartedness is the constituent principle of true taste." These are Wordsworth's own words, and deserve letters of gold. He has given many a shock to the prejudices of artificial society; and in ten thousand cases, where the heart of such society was happily sound at the core, notwithstanding the rotten kitchen-stuff with which it was encrusted, 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 indulge, and nearly let die.

Mr Wordsworth quotes from Heron'sScotlandan 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," says he, "travelling merchants from the settlements have done and continue to do much more towards civilising the Indian natives than all the missionaries, 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 any part of Scotland to England for the purpose tocarry the pack, was considered as going to lead the life, andacquire 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 minutes in his company without feeling that he was "one of God Almighty's gentlemen," belonging to the "aristocracy of Nature."

You have heard, we hope, of Alexander Wilson, the illustrious Ornithologist, second not even to Audubon—and sometimes absurdly called the Great American Ornithologist, because with pen and pencil he painted in colours that will never die—the Birds of the New World. He was a weaver—a Paisley weaver—a useful trade, and a pleasant place—where these now dim eyes of ours first saw the light. And Sandy was a pedlar. Hear his words in an autobiography unknown to the Bard: "I have this day, I believe, measured the height of an hundred stairs, and explored the recesses of twice that number of miserable habitations; and what have I gained by it?—only two shillings of worldly pelf! but an invaluable treasure of observation. In this elegant dome, wrapt up in glittering silks, and stretched on the downy sofa, recline the fair daughters of wealth and indolence—the ample mirror, flowery floor, and magnificent couch, their surrounding attendants; while, suspended in his wiry habitation above, the shrill-piped canary warbles to enchanting echoes. Within the confines of that sickly hovel, hung round with squadrons of his brother-artists, the pale-faced weaver plies the resounding lay, or launches the melancholy murmuring shuttle. Lifting this simple latch, and stooping for entrance to the miserable hut, there sits poverty 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 everything 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 moralised 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 expectations—think 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. "Apackmanis a character which none esteems, and almost every one despises. The idea that people of all ranks entertain of them is, that they are mean-spirited loquacious liars, cunning and illiterate, watching every opportunity, and using every mean art within their power, to cheat." This is a sad account of the estimation in which a trade was then held in Scotland, which the greatest of our living poets has attributed to the chief character in a poem comprehensive of philosophical discussions on all the highest interests of humanity. But both Wilson and Wordsworth are in the right: 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 ofpackman. 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—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 "stooped 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 asthat which often kindled within his spirit all the divinity of Christian man, when conversing charitably with his brother-man, a wayfarer on the dusty high-road, 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 faredThe Minstrel! wandering on from Hall to Hall,Baronial Court or Royal; cheer'd with giftsMunificent, and love, and Ladies' praise;Now meeting on his road an armed Knight,Now resting with a Pilgrim by the sideOf a clear brook;—beneath an Abbey's roofOne evening sumptuously lodged; the nextHumbly, in a religious Hospital;Or with some merry Outlaws of the wood;Or haply shrouded in a Hermit's cell.Him, sleeping or awake, the Robber spared;He walk'd—protected from the sword of warBy virtue of that sacred InstrumentHis Harp, suspended at the Traveller's side,His dear companion wheresoe'er he went,Opening from Land to Land an easy wayBy melody, and by the charm of verse.Yet not the noblest of that honour'd RaceDrew happier, loftier, more impassion'd thoughtsFrom his long journeyings and eventful life,Than this obscure Itinerant had skillTo gather, ranging through the tamer groundOf these our unimaginative days;Both while he trod the earth in humblest guise,Accoutred with his burden and his staff;And now, when free to move with lighter pace."What wonder, then, if I, whose favourite SchoolHath been the fields, the roads, and rural lanes,Look'd on this Guide with reverential love?Each with the other pleased, we now pursuedOur journey—beneath favourable skies.Turn wheresoe'er we would, he was a lightUnfailing: not a hamlet could we pass,Rarely a house, that did not yield to himRemembrances; or from his tongue call forthSome way-beguiling tale.—Nor was he loth to enter ragged huts,Huts where his charity was blest; his voiceHeard as the voice of an experienced friend.And, sometimes, where the Poor Man held disputeWith his own mind, unable to subdueImpatience, through inaptness to perceiveGeneral distress in his particular lot;Or cherishing resentment, or in vainStruggling against it, with a soul perplex'd,And finding in herself no steady powerTo draw the line of comfort that dividesCalamity, 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'dThe perturbation; listen'd to the plea;Resolved the dubious point; and sentence gaveSo grounded, so applied, that it was heardWith soften'd spirit—e'en when it condemn'd."

"What wonder, then, if I, whose favourite SchoolHath been the fields, the roads, and rural lanes,Look'd on this Guide with reverential love?Each with the other pleased, we now pursuedOur journey—beneath favourable skies.Turn wheresoe'er we would, he was a lightUnfailing: not a hamlet could we pass,Rarely a house, that did not yield to himRemembrances; or from his tongue call forthSome way-beguiling tale.—Nor was he loth to enter ragged huts,Huts where his charity was blest; his voiceHeard as the voice of an experienced friend.And, sometimes, where the Poor Man held disputeWith his own mind, unable to subdueImpatience, through inaptness to perceiveGeneral distress in his particular lot;Or cherishing resentment, or in vainStruggling against it, with a soul perplex'd,And finding in herself no steady powerTo draw the line of comfort that dividesCalamity, 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'dThe perturbation; listen'd to the plea;Resolved the dubious point; and sentence gaveSo grounded, so applied, that it was heardWith soften'd 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 aScotsman—compatriot ofChristopher 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 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 joyOn Carrock's side, a shepherd boy?No thoughts hath he but thoughts that passLight as the wind along the grass.Can this be He that hither cameIn secret, like a smother'd flame?For whom such thoughtful tears were shed.For shelter and a poor man's bread?"

Who but the same noble boy whom his high-born mother in disastrous days had confided when an infant to the care of a peasant. Yet there he is no longer safe—and

"The Boy must part from Mosedale groves,And leave Blencathara's ragged coves,And quit the flowers that summer bringsTo Glenderamakin's lofty springs;Must vanish, and his careless cheerBe turn'd to heaviness and fear."

Sir Launcelot Threlkeld shelters him till again he is free to set his foot on the mountains.

"Again he wanders forth at will,And tends a flock from hill to hill:His garb is humble; ne'er was seenSuch garb with such a noble mien;Among the shepherd grooms no mateHath he, a child of strength and state."

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 anything 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 mighty hour,When our shepherd in his power,Mounted, mail'd, with lance and sword,To his ancestors restored,Like a reappearing 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 high—whether 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,

"The vision and the faculty divine,"

that

"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 morn to night at taskwork set them by the Wealth of Nations. They are the Children of God. The soul never sleeps—not even when its wearied body is heard snoring by people living in the next street. All the souls 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 phantasy; 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 itLiberty 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 God."

Go, read theExcursionthen—venerate thePedlar—pity theSolitary—respect thePriest, and love thePoet.

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 Highland league—five miles—of rough uphill work, and are standing tiptoe on the Mountain-top. True that his altitude is not very great—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 thehighest on Riddell's ingenious Scale—in Scotland Ben-nevis, Helvellyn in England, in Ireland the Reeks; and you see that they are mere mole-hills to Chimborazo. Nevertheless, they are the hills of the Eagle. And think ye not that an Eagle glorifies the sky more than a Condor? That Vulture—for Vulture he is—flies league-high—the Golden Eagle is satisfied to poise himself half a mile above the loch, which, judged by the rapidity of its long river's flow, may be based a thousand feet or more above the level of the sea. From that height methinks the Bird-Royal, with the golden eye, can see the rising and the setting sun, and his march on the meridian, without a telescope. If ever he fly by night—and we think we have seen a shadow passing the stars that was on the wing of life—he must be a rare astronomer.

"High from the summit of a craggy cliffHung o'er the deep, such as amazing frownOn utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely raceResign the setting sun to Indian worlds,The Royal Eagle rears his vigorous young,Strong-pounced and burning with paternal fire.Now fit to raise a kingdom of their ownHe drives them from his fort, the towering seatFor ages of his empire; which in peaceUnstain'd he holds, while many a league to seaHe wings his course, and preys in distant isles."

Do you long for wings, and envy the Eagle? Not if you be wise. Alas! such is human nature, that in one year's time the novelty of pinions would be over, and you would skim undelighted the edges of the clouds. Why do we think it a glorious thing to fly from the summit of some inland mountain away to distant isles? Because our feet are bound to the dust. We enjoy the eagle's flight far more than the eagle himself driving headlong before the storm; for imagination dallies with the unknown power, and the wings that are denied to our bodies are expanded in our souls. Sublime are the circles the sun-staring creature traces in the heavens, to us who lie stretched among the heather bloom. Could we do the same, we should still be longing to pierce through the atmosphere to some other planet; and an elevation of leagues above the snows of the Himalayas would not satisfy our aspirations.But we can calculate the distances of the stars, and are happy as Galileo in his dungeon.

Yet an Eagle we are, and therefore proud of You our Scottish mountains, as you are of Us. Stretch yourself up to your full height as we now do to ours—and let "Andes, giant of the 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 of vapour—they alone are seen flying mountains high—dashing, but howling not—and in their silent ascension, all held together by the same spirit, but perpetually changing its beautiful array, where order seems ever and anon to come in among disorder, there is a grandeur that settles down in the soul of youthful poet roaming in delirium among the mountain glooms, and "pacifies the fever of his heart."

Call not now these vapours waves; for movement there is none among the ledges, and ridges, and roads, and avenues, and galleries, and groves, and houses, and churches, and castles, and fairy palaces—all framed of mist. Far up among and above that wondrous region, through which you hear voices of waterfalls deepening the silence, behold hundreds of mountain-tops—blue, purple, violet—for the sun is shining straight on some and aslant on others—and on those not at all; nor can the shepherd at your side, though he has lived among them all his life, till after long pondering tell you the names of those most familiar to him; for they seem to have all interchanged sites and altitudes, and Black Benhun himself, the Eagle-Breeder, looks so serenely in his rainbow, that you might almost mistake him for Ben Louey or the Hill of Hinds.

Have you not seen sunsets in which the mountains were imbedded in masses of clouds all burning and blazing—yes,blazing—with unimaginable mixtures of all the colours that ever were born—intensifying into a glory that absolutely became insupportable to the soul as insufferable to the eyes—and that left the eyes for hours after you had retreated from the supernatural scene, even when shut, all filled with floating films of cross-lights, cutting the sky-imagery into gorgeous fragments? And were not the mountains of such sunsets, whether they were of land or of cloud, sufficiently vast for your utmost capacities and powers of delight and joy longing to commune with the Region then felt to be in very truth Heaven? Nor could the spirit, entranced in admiration, conceive at that moment any Heaven beyond—while the senses themselves seemed to have had given them a revelation, that as it was created could be felt but by an immortal spirit.

It elevates our being to be in the body near the sky—at once on earth and in heaven. In the body? Yes—we feel at once fettered and free. In Time we wear our fetters, and heavy though they be, and painfully riveted on, seldom do we welcome Death coming to strike them off—but groan at sight of the executioner. In eternity we believe that all is spiritual—and in that belief, which doubt sometimes shakes but to prove that its foundation lies rooted far down below all earthquakes, endurable is the sound of dust to dust. Poets speak of the spirit, while yet in the flesh, blending, mingling, being absorbed in the great forms of the outward universe, and they speak as if such absorption were celestial and divine. But is not this a material creed? Let Imagination beware how she seeks to glorify the objects of the senses, and having glorified them, to elevate them into a kindred being with our own, exalting them that we may claim with them that kindred being, as if we belonged to them and not they to us, forgetting that they are made to perish, we to live for ever!

But let us descend the mountain by the side of this torrent. What a splendid series of translucent pools! We carry "The Excursion" in our pocket, for the use of our friends; but our own presentation-copy is here—we have gotten it by heart. And it does our heart good to hear ourselves recite. Listen, ye Naiads, to the famous picture of the Ram:—

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