That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

The genius of the poet, which thus dignifies and consecrates the abstractions of our nature, is scarcely less felicitious in its pictures of society at large, and in its philosophical delineations of the characters and fortunes of individual man. Seen through the holy medium of his imagination, all things appear "bright and solemn and serene "-the asperities of our earthly condition are softened away-and the most gentle and evanescent of its hues gleam and tremble over it. He delights to trace out those ties of sympathy by which the meanest of beings are connected with the general heart. He touches the delicate strings by which the great family of man are bound together, and thence draws forth sounds of choicest music. He makes us partake of those joys which are "spread through the earth to be caught in stray gifts by whoever will find " them-discloses the hidden wealth of the soul-finds beauty every where, and "good in every thing." He draws character with the softest pencil, and shades it with the pensive tints of gentlest thought. The pastoral of The Brothers -the story of Michael-and the histories in the Excursion which the priest gives while standing among the rustic graves of the church-yard, among the mountains, are full of exquisite portraits, touched and softened by a divine imagination which human love inspires. He rejoices also to exhibit that holy process by which the influences of creation are shed abroad in the heart, to excite, to mould, or to soften. We select the following stanzas from many passages of this kind of equal beauty, because in the fantasy of nature's making "a lady of her own," the object of the poet is necessarily developed with more singleness than where reference is incidentally made to the effect of scenery on the mind:

:

"Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, a lovelier flower

On earth was never sown;

This child I to myself will take,
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own!

Myself will to the darling be

Both law and impulse: and with me
The girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power,

To kindle or restrain.

She shall be sportive as the fawn,
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;

And her's shall be the breathing balm,
And her's the silence and the calm

Of mute insensate things.

The floating clouds their state shall lend

To her; for her the willow bend;

Nor shall she fail to see

Even in the motions of the storm

Grace that shall mould the maiden's form

By silent sympathy.

The stars of midnight shall be dear

To her; and she shall lean on air

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound

Shall pass into her face!"

But we must break off to give a passage in a bolder and most passionate strain, which represents the effect of the tropical grandeur and voluptuousness of nature on a wild and fiery spirit-at once awakening and half-redeeming its irregular desires. It is from the poem of" Ruth,”—a piece where the most profound of human affections is disclosed amidst the richest imagery, and incidents of wild romance are told with a Grecian purity of expression. The impulses of a beautiful and daring youth are thus represented as inspired by Indian scenery:

"The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult of a tropic sky,
Might well be dangerous food,
For him, a youth to whom was given
So much of earth, so much of heaven,
And such impetuous blood.

Whatever in those climes he found
Irregular in sight or sound,
Did to his mind impart

A kindred impulse, seem'd allied
To his own powers, and justified

The workings of his heart.

Nor less to feed voluptuous thought,
The beauteous forms of Nature wrought,
Fair trees and lovely flowers;

The breezes their own languor lent;
The stars had feelings which they sent
Into those gorgeous bowers.

Yet in his worst pursuits, I ween

That sometimes there did intervene

Pure hopes of high intent;

For passions link'd to forms as fair

And stately, needs must have their share

Of noble sentiment."

We can do little more than enumerate those pieces of narrative and character, which we esteem the best in their kind of our author's works. The old Cumberland Beggar is one of those which linger most tenderly on our memories. The poet here takes almost the lowliest of his species-an aged mendicant, one of the last of that class who made regular circuits amidst the cottages of the north-and after a vivid picture of his frame bent with years, of his slow motion and decayed senses, he asserts them not divorced from good-traces out the links which bind him to his fellows-and shows the benefit which even he can diffuse in his rounds, while he serves as a record to bind together past deeds and offices of charity-compels to acts of love by "the mild necessity of use" those whose hearts would otherwise harden-gives to the young "the first mild touch of sympathy and thought, in which they find their kindred with a world where want and sorrow are "-and enables even the poor to taste the joy of bestowing. This last blessing is thus set forth and illustrated by a precious example of self-denying goodness and cheerful hope, which is at once more tear-moving and more sublime than the finest things in Cowper :

"Man is dear to man; the poorest poor Long for some moments in a weary life

When they can know and feel that they have been,
Themselves, the fathers and the dealers out
Of some small blessings; have been kind to such
As needed kindness, for this single cause,
That we have all of us one human heart.
-Such pleasure is to one kind being known,
My neighbour, when with punctual care, each week
Duly as Friday comes, though prest herself
With her own wants, she from her chest of meal
Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip
Of this old mendicant, and, from her door
Returning with invigorated heart,

Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in Heaven."

Then, in the Excursion, there is the story of the Ruined Cottage, with its admirable gradations, more painful than the pathetic narratives of its author usually are, yet not without redeeming traits of sweetness, and a reconciling spirit which takes away its sting. There, too, is the intense history of the Solitary's sorrows-there the story of the Hanoverian and the Jacobite, who learned to snatch a sympathy from their bitter disputings, grew old in controversy and in friendship, and were buried side by side-there the picture of Oswald, the gifted and generous and graceful hero of the mountain solitude, who was cut off in the blossom of his youth—there the record of that pleasurable sage, whose house death, after forty years of forbearance, visited with thronging summonses, and took off his family one after the other, "with intervals of peace," till he too, with cheerful thoughts about him, was “overcome by unexpected sleep in one blest moment," and as he lay on the "warm lap of his mother-earth," "gathered to his fathers." There are those fine vestiges, and yet finer traditions and conjectures, of the good knight Sir Alfred Irthing, the “mild-hearted champion" who had retired in Elizabeth's days to a retreat among the hills, and had drawn around him a kindred and a family. Of him nothing remained but a gentle fame in the hearts of the villagers, an uncouth monumental stone grafted on the church-walls, which the sagest antiquarian might muse over in vain, and his name engraven in a wreath or posy around three bells with which he had endowed the spire. “So," exclaims the poet, in strains as touching and majestic as ever were breathed over the transitory grandeur of earth—

"So fails, so languishes, grows dim and dies,
All that this world is proud of. From their spheres
The stars of human glory are cast down;
Perish the roses, and the flowers of kings,

Princes and emperors, and the crowns and palms
Of all the mighty, withered, and consumed."

In the Excursion, too, is the exquisite tale of Poor Ellena seduced and forsaken girl-from which we will give one affecting incident, scarcely to be matched, for truth and beauty, through the many sentimental poems and tales which have been founded on a similar wo:

"Beside the cottage in which Ellen dwelt
Stands a tall ash-tree; to whose topmost twig
A Thrush resorts, and annually chaunts,
At morn and evening from that naked perch,
While all the undergrove is thick with leaves,
A time-beguiling ditty, for delight

Of his fond partner, silent in the nest.

-Ay why,' said Ellen, sighing to herself,

Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge;

And nature that is kind in Woman's breast,

And reason that in Man is wise and good,
And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,.
Why do not these prevail for human life,
To keep two hearts together, that began
Their spring-time with one love, and that have need
Of mutual pity and forgiveness, sweet

To grant, or be received, while that poor bird,

-O come and hear him! Thou who hast to me
Been faithless, hear him, though a lowly creature,
One of God's simple children that yet know not
The universal Parent, how he sings

As if he wish'd the firmament of Heaven
Should listen, and give back to him the voice
Of his triumphant constancy and love;
The proclamation that he makes, how far
His darkness doth transcend our fickle light!'

Such was the tender passage, not by me
Repeated without loss of simple phrase,
Which I perused, even as the words had been
Committed by forsaken Ellen's hand
To the blank margin of a Valentine,
Bedropp'd with tears."