is not incompatible with the practice of the " 'angler's silent trade," or with the pleasure of "filling our panniers." The pedlar, too, we have reason to know, was, like his poet and ourselves a craftsman, and for love beat the molecatcher at busking a batch of May-flies. The 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 slowworm-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,

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 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 from 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 to make his poetry popular among the "educated circles."

But we are not a nation of idolators, and worship neither graven images 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 the Excursion.

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

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

"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 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,

"So the foundations of his mind were laid."

"For many a tale

Traditionary, round the mountains hung,
And many a legend, peopling the dark woods,
Nourished imagination in her growth,
And gave the mind that apprehensive power
By which she is made quick to recognise
The 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 sustained,
With will inflexible, those fearful pangs,
Triumphantly displayed in records left
Of 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 are best 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 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 condition -for

"Accumulated feelings pressed his heart

With still increasing weight; he was o'erpowered
By nature, by the turbulence subdued
Of his own mind, by mystery and hope,
And the first virgin passion of a soul
Communing with the glorious universe."

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

the youth was "greater than he knew," yet that there was someting 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 reared; much wanting to assist
The growth of intellect, yet gaining more,
And every moral feeling of his soul

Strengthened and braced, by breathing in content
The keen, the wholesome air of poverty,

And drinking from the well of homely life."

You have read, our bright, bold neophyte, for we cut the squire, 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?

No thoughts hath he but thoughts that pass
Light as the wind along the grass.

Can this be he that hither came

In secret, like a smother'd flame?

For whom such thoughtful tears were shed,

For shelter and a poor man's bread!"

The same noble boy whom his highborn 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's groves,
And leave Blencathera's rugged coves,
And quit the flowers that summer brings
To Glenderamakin's lofty springs;
Must vanish, and his careless cheer
Be turned to heaviness and fear."

Sir Launcelot Throlkeld 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 seen
Such garb with such a noble mien;
Among the shepherd grooms no mate
Hath 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 honoured 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,

No-his generous nature is true to its generous nurture; and how deeply imbued with the goodness he had too long loved in others ever to forget

"The silence that is amid the starry hills,"