in Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, is to be found only in the subject and the style: the sentiments are subtle and profound. In the latter respect, his poetry is as much above the common standard or capacity, as in the other it is below it. His poems bear a distant resemblance to some of Rembrandt's landscapes, who, more than any other painter, created the medium through which he saw nature, and out of the stump of an old tree, a break in the sky, and a bit of water, could produce an effect almost miraculous.

Mr. Wordsworth's poems in general are the history of a refined and contemplative mind, conversant only with itself and nature. An intense feeling of the associations of this kind is the peculiar and characteristic feature of all his productions. He has described the love of nature better than any other poet. This sentiment, inly felt in all its force, and sometimes carried to an excess, is the source both of his strength and of his weakness. However I may sympathize with Mr. Wordsworth in his attachment to groves and fields, I cannot extend the same admiration to their inhabitants, or to the manners of a country life in general. I go along with him, while he is the subject of hist own narrative, but I take leave of him when he makes pedlers and ploughmen his heroes and the interpreters of his sentiments. It is, I think, getting into low company, and company, besides, that I do not like. I take Mr. Wordsworth himself for a great poet, a fine moralist, and a deep philosopher; but if he insists on introducing me to a friend of his, a parish clerk, or the barber of the village, who is as wise as himself, I must be excused if I draw back with some little want of cordial faith. I am satisfied with the friendship which subsisted between Parson Adams and Joseph Andrews.-The author himself lets out occasional hints that all is not as it should be among these northern Arcadians. Though, in general, he professes to soften the harsher features of rustic vice, he has given us one picture of depraved and inveterate selfishness, which I apprehend could only be found among the inhabitants of these boasted mountain districts. The account of one of his heroines concludes as follows:

"A sudden illness seized her in the strength

Of life's autumnal season.-Shall I tell

How on her bed of death the matron lay,
To Providence submissive, so she thought;
But fretted, vexed, and wrought upon-almost
To anger, by the malady that griped
Her prostrate frame with unrelaxing power,
As the fierce eagle fastens on the lamb.

She prayed, she moaned-her husband's sister watched
Her dreary pillow, waited on her needs;

And yet the very sound of that kind foot

Was anguish to her ears! And must she rule
Sole mistress of this house when I am gone?
Sit by my fire-possess what I possessed-
Tend what I tended-calling it her own!'
Enough;-I fear too much.-Of nobler feeling
Take this example:-One autumnal evening,
While she was yet in prime of health and strength,
I well remember, while I passed her door,
Musing with loitering step, and upward eye
Turned towards the planet Jupiter, that hung
Above the centre of the vale, a voice

Roused me, her voice;-it said, 'That glorious star

In its untroubled element will shine

As now it shines, when we are laid in earth,

And safe from all our sorrows.' She is safe,
And her uncharitable acts, I trust,

And harsh unkindnesses, are all forgiven;

Though, in this vale, remembered with deep awe!"

I think it is pushing our love of the admiration of natural objects a good deal too far to make it a set-off against a story like the preceding.

All country people hate each other. They have so little comfort that they envy their neighbours the smallest pleasure or advantage, and nearly grudge themselves the necessaries of life. From not being accustomed to enjoyment, they become hardened and averse to it-stupid, for want of thought-selfish, for want of society. There is nothing good to be had in the country, or, if there is, they will not let you have it. rather injure themselves than oblige any one else. mon mode of life is a system of wretchedness and self-denial, like what we read of among barbarous tribes. You live out of the world. You cannot get your tea and sugar without sending to the next town for it: you pay double, and have it of

They had Their com

the worst quality. The small-beer is sure to be sour—the milk skimmed the meat bad, or spoiled in the cooking. You cannot do a single thing you like; you cannot walk out or sit at home, or write or read, or think or look as if you did, without being subject to impertinent curiostiy. The apothecary annoys you with his complaisance; the parson with his superciliousness. If you are poor, you are despised; if you are rich, you are feared and hated. If you do any one a favour, the whole neighbourhood is up in arms; the clamour is like that of a rookery; and the person himself, it is ten to one, laughs at you for your pains, and takes the first opportunity of shewing you that he labours under no uneasy sense of obligation. There is a perpetual round of mischief-making and backbiting, for want of any better amusement. There are no shops, no taverns, no theatres, no opera, no concerts, no pictures, no public buildings, no crowded streets, no noise of coaches, or of courts of law,neither courtiers nor courtesans, no literary parties, no fashionable routs, no society, no books, or knowledge of books. Vanity and luxury are the civilizers of the world, and sweeteners of human life. Without objects either of pleasure or action, it grows harsh and crabbed: the mind becomes stagnant, the affections callous, and the eye dull. Man left to himself soon degenerates into a very disagreeable person. Ignorance is always bad enough; but rustic ignorance is intolerable. Aristotle has observed that tragedy purifies the affections by terror and pity. If so, a company of tragedians should be established at the public expense, in every village or hundred, as a better mode of education than either Bell's or Lancaster's. The benefits of knowledge are never so well understood as from seeing the effects of ignorance, in their naked, undisguised state, upon common country people. Their selfishness and insensibility are perhaps less owing to the hardships and privations, which make them, like people out at sea in a boat, ready to devour one another, than to their having no idea of anything beyond themselves and their immediate sphere of action. They have no knowledge of, and consequently can take no interest in, anything which is not an object of their senses, and of their daily pursuits. They hate all strangers, and have generally a nick

the

name for the inhabitants of the next village. The two young noblemen in Guzman d'Alfarache, who went to visit their mistresses only a league out of Madrid, were set upon by the peasants, who came round them calling out, a wolf." Those who have no enlarged or liberal ideas can have no disinterested or generous sentiments. Persons who are in the habit of reading novels and romances are compelled to take a deep interest, and to have their affections strongly excited by fictitious characters and imaginary situations; their thoughts and feelings are constantly carried out of themselves, to persons they never saw, and things that never existed history enlarges the mind, by familiarizing us with the great vicissitudes of human affairs, and the catastrophes of states and kingdoms; the study of morals accustoms us to refer our actions to a general standard of right and wrong; and abstract reasoning, in general, strengthens the love of truth, and produces an inflexibility of principle which cannot stoop to low trick and cunning. Books, in Lord Bacon's phrase, Country people have none of

are "a discipline of humanity." these advantages, nor any others to supply the place of them. Having no circulating libraries to exhaust their love of the marvellous, they amuse themselves with fancying the disasters and disgraces of their particular acquaintance. Having no humpbacked Richard to excite their wonder and abhorrence, they make themselves a bug-bear of their own, out of the first obnoxious person they can lay their hands on. Not having the fictitious distresses and gigantic crimes of poetry to stimulate their imagination and their passions, they vent their whole stock of spleen, malice, and invention, on their friends and next-door neighbours. They get up a little pastoral drama at home, with fancied events, but real characters. All their spare time is spent in manufacturing and propagating the lie for the day, which does its office, and expires. The next day is spent in the same manner. It is thus that they embellish the simplicity of rural life! The common people in civilized countries are a kind of domesticated savages. They have not the wild imagination, the passions, the fierce energies, or dreadful vicissitudes of the savage tribes, nor have they the leisure, the indolent enjoyments and romantic superstitions, which belonged to the

pastoral life in milder climates, and more remote periods of society. They are taken out of a state of nature, without being put in possession of the refinements of art. The customs and institutions of society cramp their imaginations without giving them knowledge. If the inhabitants of the mountainous districts described by Mr. Wordsworth are less gross and sensual than others, they are more selfish. Their egotism becomes more concentrated, as they are more insulated, and their purposes more inveterate, as they have less competition to struggle with. The weight of matter which surrounds them crushes the finer sympathies. Their minds become hard and cold, like the rocks which they cultivate. The immensity of their mountains makes the human form appear little and insignificant. Men are seen crawling between heaven and earth, like insects to their graves. Nor do they regard one another any more than flies on a wall. Their physiognomy expresses the materialism of their character, which has only one principle-rigid self-will. They move on with their eyes and foreheads fixed, looking neither to the right nor to the left, with a heavy slouch in their gait, and seeming as if nothing would divert them from their path. I do not admire this plodding pertinacity, always directed to the main chance. There is nothing which excites so little sympathy, in my mind, as exclusive selfishness.—If my theory is wrong, at least it is taken from pretty close observation, and is, I think, confirmed by Mr. Wordsworth's own account.

Of the stories contained in the latter part of the volume, I like that of the Whig and Jacobite friends and of the good knight, Sir Alfred Irthing, the best. The last reminded me of a fine sketch of a similar character in the beautiful poem of Hart Leap Well. To conclude,-If the skill with which the poet had chosen his materials had been equal to the power which he has undeniably exerted over them; if the objects, whether persons or things) which he makes use of as the vehicle of his sentiments, had been such as to convey them in all their depth and force; then the production before me might indeed "have proved a monument," as he himself wishes it, worthy of the author, and of his country. Whether, as it is, this very original and powerful performance may not rather remain like one of