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 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. 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 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 wheresoe'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 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 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 wheresoe'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 was he loth 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--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 a _Scotsman_--compatriot of CHRISTOPHER 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 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?"

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 brings To Glenderamakin's lofty springs; Must vanish, and his careless cheer Be 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 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 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 it LIBERTY 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 the EXCURSION then--venerate the PEDLAR--pity the SOLITARY--respect the PRIEST, and love the POET.

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 the highest 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 cliff Hung o'er the deep, such as amazing frown On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race Resign 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 own He drives them from his fort, the towering seat For ages of his empire; which in peace Unstain'd he holds, while many a league to sea He 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:--

"Thus having reach'd a bridge, that overarch'd The hasty rivulet, where it lay becalm'd In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw A twofold image; on a grassy bank A snow-white Ram, and in the crystal flood Another and the same! Most beautiful On the green turf, with his imperial front Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb, The breathing creature stood; as beautiful Beneath him, show'd his shadowy counterpart; Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky, And each seem'd centre of his own fair world.

Antipodes unconscious of each other, Yet, in partition, with their several spheres Blended in perfect stillness to our sight.

Ah! what a pity were it to disperse Or to disturb so fair a spectacle, And yet a breath can do it."