"While yet he linger'd in the rudiments Of science, and among her simplest laws, His triangles--they were the stars of heaven, The silent stars! oft did he take delight To 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 sing Old songs, the product of his native hills; A skilful distribution of sweet sounds, Feeding the soul, and eagerly imbibed As cool refreshing water, by the care Of the industrious husbandman diffused Through 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 earth A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports And teasing ways of children vex'd not him: Indulgent listener was he to the tongue Of 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 their _walks_

"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 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 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 the FORTUNATI

"The fulgent head Star-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 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."

The boy had small need of books--

"For many a tale Traditionary, round the mountains hung, And many a legend, peopling the dark woods, Nourish'd 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 sustain'd, With will inflexible, those fearful pangs, Triumphantly display'd 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 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 heart With still increasing weight; he was o'erpower'd 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

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

Thus endowed, and thus instructed,

"By Nature, that did never yet betray The 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 assist The growth of intellect, yet gaining more, And every moral feeling of his soul Strengthen'd and braced, by breathing in content The 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 course Of humble industry that promised best To 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 constrains The Savoyard to quit his native rocks, The free-born Swiss to leave his narrow vales (Spirit attach'd to regions mountainous Like their own steadfast clouds), did now impel His 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 dwelt In rustic sequestration, all dependent Upon the PEDLAR'S toil, 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'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," 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 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." 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. "A _packman_ is 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 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--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.