Too, too contracted are these walls of flesh, Of time and change disdaining, takes its course With the same modifying and incorporating power, he tells us,- That with interpositions, which would hide From palpable oppressions of despair.—p. 188. This is high poetry; though (as we have ventured to lay the basis of the author's sentiments in a sort of liberal Quakerism) from some parts of it, others may, with more plausibility, object to the appearance of a kind of Natural Methodism: we could have wished therefore that the tale of Margaret had been postponed, till the reader had been strengthened by some previous acquaintance with the author's theory, and not placed in the front of the poem, with a kind of ominous aspect, beautifully tender as it is. It is a tale of a cottage, and its female tenant, gradually decaying together, while she expected the return of one whom poverty and not unkindness had driven from her arms. We trust ourselves only with the conclusion nine tedious years From their first separation, nine long years, She lingered in unquiet widowhood, A wife and widow. I have heard, my friend, The The shade, and look abroad. On this old bench Was busy in the distance, shaping things That made her heart beat quick. You see that path; Closed up each chink, and with fresh bands of straw Was sapped; and, while she slept, the nightly damps In sickness she remained; and here she died, The fourth book, entitled ' Despondency Corrected,' we consider as the most valuable portion of the poem. For moral grandeur; for wide scope of thought and a long train of lofty imagery; for tender personal appeals; and a versification which we feel we ought to notice, but feel it also so involved in the poetry, that we can hardly mention it as a distinct excellence; it stands without competition among our didactic and descriptive verse. The general tendency of the argument (which we might almost affirm to be the leading moral of the poem) is to abate the pride of the calculating understanding, and to reinstate the imagination and the affections *Her husband had enlisted for a soldier. in those seats from which modern philosophy has laboured but too successfully to expel them. 'Life's autumn past,' says the grey-haired Wanderer, I stand on winter's verge, And daily lose what I desire to keep ;. Where soul is dead and feeling hath no place.-p. 168. In the same spirit, those illusions of the imaginative faculty to which the peasantry in solitary districts are peculiarly subject, are represented as the kindly ministers of conscience: with whose service charged They come and go, appear and disappear; Awakening, chastening an intemperate grief, Reverting to more distant ages of the world, the operation of that same faculty in producing the several fictions of Chaldean, Persian, and Grecian idolatry, is described with such seductive power, that the Solitary, in good earnest, seems alarmed at the tendency of his own argument. Notwithstanding his fears, however, there is one thought so uncommonly fine, relative to the spirituality which lay hid beneath the gross material forms of Greek worship, in metal or stone, that we cannot resist the allurement of transcribing it— Triumphant o'er his pompous show Of art, this palpable array of sense, "Take, running river, take these locks of mine" - Thus Thus would the votary say-" this severed hair, Thy banks, Cephisus, he again hath trod, Thy murmurs heard; and drunk the chrystal lymph That hath been, is, and where it was and is To the blind walk of mortal accident; From diminution safe and weakening age; While man grows old, and dwindles and decays; And countless generations of mankind Depart, and leave no vestige where they trod.-p. 174. In discourse like this the first day passes away.-The second (for this almost dramatic poem takes up the action of two summer days) is varied by the introduction of the village priest; to whom the Wanderer resigns the office of chief speaker, which had been yielded to his age and experience on the first. The conference is begun at the gate of the church-yard; and after some natural speculations concerning death and immortality-and the custom of funereal and sepulchral observances, as deduced from a feeling of immortality— certain doubts are proposed respecting the quantity of moral worth existing in the world, and in that mountainous district in particular. In the resolution of these doubts, the priest enters upon a most affecting and singular strain of narration, derived from the graves around him. Pointing to hillock after hillock, he gives short histories of their tenants, disclosing their humble virtues, and touching with tender hand upon their frailties. Nothing can be conceived finer than the manner of introducing these tales. With heaven above his head, and the mouldering turf at his feet-standing betwixt life and death-he seems to maintain that spiritual relation which he bore to his living flock, in its undiminished strength, even with their ashes; and to be in his proper cure, or diocese, among the dead. We might extract powerful instances of pathos from these talesthe story of Ellen in particular-but their force is in combination, and in the circumstances under which they are introduced. The traditionary anecdote of the Jacobite and Hanoverian, as less liable to suffer by transplanting, and as affording an instance of that finer species of humour, that thoughtful playfulness in which the author more nearly perhaps than in any other quality resem bles bles Cowper, we shall lay (at least a part of it) before our readers. It is the story of a whig who, having wasted a large estate in election contests, retired' beneath a borrowed name' to a small town among these northern mountains, where a Caledonian laird, a follower of the house of Stuart, who had fled his country after the overthrow at Culloden, returning with the return of lenient times, had also fixed his residence. Here, then, they met, A favorite boundary to their lengthened walks There live who yet remember to have seen So, where the mouldered tree had stood, was raised That |