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censors of manners; and should contribute much to polish the roughness, and soften the rusticity of our peasantry. It is not more than twenty or thirty years, since a young man going from any part of Scotland to England, of purpose to carry the pack, was considered as 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."

It is pleasant to hear Wordsworth speak of his own "personal knowledge" of packman 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 in his poetry; and he had not now been "sole king of rocky Cumberland," had he not studied the characters 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. Burns has said, too,

"The muse, nae poet ever fand her,
Till by himsell he loved to wander,

Adown some trotting burn's meander," &c.

and such have been Wordsworth's wanderings among all the solitary beauties and sublimities of nature. Yet the inspiration he derived even 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 high-road, or among the green lanes and alleys of merry England. Thence came the Creation-both bright and solemn-of the age, humble but high, of the finest of philosophical poems-with soul "capacious and serene," the sage at whom-oh! ninny of ninnies, we have been assured that you have sneered, to the capricious beck of Mr. Jeffrey, himself a man, in his wiser moods, to honour most, as Wordsworth always does, "the aristocracy of

nature," which you, presumptuous simpleton, must needs despise; and would-if you knew how to set about itperhaps eke-reform! Now we shall shut and seal your mouth in perpetual dumbness, with a magical spell.

"In days of yore how fortunately fared
The minstrel! wandering on from hall to hall,
Baronial court or royal; cheer'd with gifts
Munificent, and love, and ladies' praise;
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
One evening sumptuously lodged; the next
Humbly, 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 war
By virtue of that sacred instrument
His harp, suspended at the traveller's side;
His dear companion whereso'er he went,
Opening from land to land an easy way
By melody, and by the charm of verse.
Yet not the noblest of that honour'd race
Drew happier, loftier, more impassion'd thoughts
From his long journeyings and eventful life,
Than this obscure itinerant had skill

To gather, ranging through the tamer ground
Of these our unimaginative days;

Both while he trode 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 school
Hath been the fields, the roads, and rural lanes,
Look'd on this guide with reverential love!
Each with the other pleased, we now pursued
Our journey-beneath favourable skies.
Turn whereso'er we would, he was a light
Unfailing: not a hamlet could we pass,
Rarely a house, that did not yield to him
Remembrances; or from his tongue call forth
Some way-beguiling tale. Nor less regard
Accompanied those strains of apt discourse,
Which Nature's various objects might inspire;
And in the silence of his face I read

His overflowing spirit. 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:
Their rights acknowledging, he felt for all.
Oft was occasion given me to perceive
How the calm pleasures of the pasturing herd
To happy contemplation soothed his walk;
How the poor brute's condition, forced to run
Its course of suffering in the public road,
Sad contrast! all too often smote his heart
With unavailing pity. Rich in love
And sweet humanity, he was, himself,
To the degree that he desired, beloved.
-Greetings and smiles we met with all day long
From faces that he knew; we took our seats
By many a cottage hearth, where he received
The welcome of an inmate come from far.
-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 soften'd spirit-even when it condemn'd."

Who, on perusing that passage, and meditating thereon, will exclaim with us, in the words of the same bardapplying to himself the fulfilled prophecy-but trusting that the event in the last line will be far away,—

66

Blessings be with them and eternal praise!
The POETS who on earth have made us heirs

Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays-
O might my name be number'd among theirs!
Then gladly would I end my mortal days."

This is an episode.

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Wilson, on the breaking out of the flames of the French Revolution, like many other ardent spirits, thought they were fires kindled by a light from heaven. He associated himself with the friends of the people-most of whom soon proved themselves to be the enemies of the human His biographer in Constable's Miscellany-unlike one or two others elsewhere-saw Wilson's conduct, in all things connected with "this passage in his life," in its true light. That gentleman does not calumniate the respectable townsmen of the misguided poet-and a poet he was for bringing him to legal punishment for an unprincipled act, (an attempt to extort money or the suppression of satire, or rather gross and false abuse of private character,) which he committed, at a time when his moral sense-in after time firm, clear, and pure—was weakened, disturbed, and darkened by dangerous dreams and delusions, which his own reason soon afterwards dispelled. "His conduct had given umbrage to those in power, and he was marked as a dangerous character. In this condition, foiled in his efforts to acquire a poet's name; depressed by poverty; hated by those who had smarted beneath his lash; and suspected on account of his politics; it is not to be wondered at, that Wilson listened willingly to the flattering accounts regarding America, and speedily resolved to seek that abode of Utopian excellence." determination was high-hearted and heroic, for the means were so which enabled him to carry it into execution. "When he finally determined on emigration, he was not possessed of funds sufficient to pay his passage. In order to surmount that obstacle, he adopted a plan of extreme diligence at his loom, and rigid personal economy; by which means he amassed the necessary sum. After living for a period of four months, at the rate of one shilling per week, he paid farewell visits to several of his most intimate friends, retraced some of his old favourite haunts, and bidding adieu to his native land, set out on

His

foot for Port Patrick,"-thence sailed to Belfast, and then embarked on board an American ship bound to Newcastle, in the State of Delaware, where he arrived on the 14th of July, 1794, "with no specific object, without a single letter of introduction, and with only a few shillings in his pocket." He had then just completed his twenty-eighth year.

For eight years, Wilson struggled on, now a copperplate printer-now a weaver-now a pedlar-now a land-measurer-now a schoolmaster—and now of a composite occupation and nondescript. But he was never idle in mind nor body-always held fast his integrity; and having some reason to think angrily-though we doubt not, lovinglyof Scotland-he persisted resolutely, if not in thinking, in speaking and writing highly of American life and character-also of "every kind of peaches, apples, walnuts, and wild grapes, not enclosed by high walls, nor guarded by traps and mastiffs." He adds, "When I see them sit down to a table, loaded with roasted and boiled, fruits of different kinds, and plenty of good cider, and this only the common fare of the common people, I think of my poor country. men, and cannot help feeling sorrowful at the contrast." These and other lamentations of his over the wretchedness of "cauld kail in Aberdeen and custocks in Strathbogie," have too much in them of bile and spleen; nor does it appear that, with all his extraordinary talents, at the end of eight years, he was better off-or so well-in the New World, as he would probably have been, with equally proper and prudent conduct, in the old. Philadelphia was not a kinder mother to him than Paisley had been-and in the land of liberty it appears that he had led the life of a slave. Man does not live by bread alone-and certainly not by peaches, apples, walnuts, and wild grapes-with plenty of good cider. There were enjoyments partaken of by the poor all over Scotland, during those eight years, which few or none knew better how to appreciate than this highly gifted man, utterly unknown to the people of America; nor, in the nature of things, could they have had existence. But Wilson, in spite of his vainly cherished dissatisfaction with the state of things in his native country, loved it tenderly, and tenderly did he love the friends

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