With these tear-moving expressions of ill-fated love, we may contrast the following rich picture of the affection in its early bloom, from the tale of Vandracour and Julia, which will show how delightedly the poet might have lingered in the luxuries of amatory song, had he not chosen rather to brood over the whole world of sentiment and passion :

"Arabian fiction never fill'd the world

With half the wonders that were wrought for him.
Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring;
Life turn'd the meanest of her implements
Before his eyes to price above all gold;

The house she dwelt in was a sainted shrine;
Her chamber window did surpass in glory

The portal of the dawn; all paradise

Could, by the simple opening of a door,

Let itself in upon him; pathways, walks,

Swarm'd with enchantment, till his spirit sank,
Surcharged, within him,-overblest to move
Beneath a sun that walks a weary world
To its dull round of ordinary cares;
A man too happy for mortality."

Perhaps the highest instance of Wordsworth's imaginative faculty, exerted in a tale of human fortunes, is to be found in “The White Doe of Rylstone." He has here succeeded in two distinct efforts, the results of which are yet in entire harmony. He has shown the gentle spirit of a high-born maiden gathering strength and purity from sorrow, and finally after the destruction of her family, and amidst the ruin of her paternal domains, consecrated by suffering. He has also here, by the introduction of that lovely wonder, the favourite doe of his heroine, at once linked the period of his narrative to that of its events, and softened down the saddest catastrophe and the most exquisite of mortal agonies. A gallant chieftain, one of the goodliest pillars of the olden time, falls, with eight of his sons, in a hopeless contest for the religion to which they were devoted-the ninth, who followed them unarmed, is slain while he strives to bear away, for their sake, the banner which he had abjured-the sole surviver, a helpless woman, is left to wander desolate about the silent halls and tangled glades, once witnesses of her joyous infancy-and yet all this variety of grief is rendered mild and soothing by the influences of the imagination of the poet.

The doe which first with its quiet sympathy excited relieving tears in its forsaken mistress, which followed her a gentle companion through all her mortal wanderings, and which years after made Sabbath visits to her grave, is like the spirit of nature personified to heal, to bless, and to elevate. All who have read the poem aright, will feel prepared for that apotheosis which the poet has reserved for this radiant being, and will recognise the imaginative truth of that bold figure, by which the decaying towers of Bolton are made to smile upon its form, and to attest its unearthly relations :—

"There doth the gentle creature lie
With these adversities unmoved;
Calm spectacle, by earth and sky
In their benignity approved!
And aye, methinks, this hoary pile,
Subdued by outrage and decay,
Looks down upon her with a smile,

A gracious smile, that seems to say,
Thou art not a Child of Time,

But daughter of the eternal Prime!'"

Although Wordsworth chiefly delights in these humanities of poetry, he has shown that he possesses feelings to appreciate and power to grasp the noblest of classic fictions. No one can read his Dion, his Loadamia, and the most majestic of his sonnets, without perceiving that he has power to endow the stateliest shapes of old mythology with new life, and to diffuse about them a new glory. Hear him, for example, breaking forth, with holy disdain of the worldly spirit of the time, into this sublime apostrophe:

.

"Great God! I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn:

So might I, standing on some pleasant lee,

Have glimpses which might make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn!"

But he has chosen rather to survey the majesties of Greece, with the eye of a philosopher as well as of a poet. He reviews them with emotions equally remote from pedantry and from intolerance-regarding not only the grace and the loveliness of their forms, but their symbolical meaning

tracing them to their elements in the human soul, and bringing before us the eldest wisdom which was embodied in their shapes, and speedily forgotten by their worshippers. Thus, among "the palpable array of sense," does he discover hints of immortal life-thus does he transport us back more than twenty centuries-and enable us to enter into the most mysterious and far-reaching hopes of a Grecian votary:

"A Spirit hung,

Beautiful region! o'er thy Towns and Farms,
Statues, and Temples, and memorial Tombs;
And emanations were perceived, and acts
Of immortality, in Nature's course,
Exemplified by mysteries, that were felt
As bonds, on grave Philosopher imposed
And armed Warrior; and in every grove,
A gay or pensive tenderness prevail'd

When piety more awful had relaxed.

Take, running River, take these locks of mine,"
Thus would the votary say,-'this sever'd hair,
My vow fulfilling, do I here present,

Thankful for my beloved child's return.

Thy banks, Cephisus, he again hath trod,

Thy murmurs heard; and drunk the crystal lymph
With which thou dost refresh the thirsty lip,

And moisten all day long these flowery fields."

And doubtless, sometimes, when the hair was shed
Upon the flowing stream, a thought arose

Of life continuous, Being unimpair'd,

That hath been, is, and where it was and is

There shall be,-seen, and heard, and felt, and known,
And recognised,-existence unexposed

To the blind walk of mortal accident;

From diminution free, and weakening age,

While man grows old, and dwindles, and decays;

And countless generations of mankind

Depart and leave no vestige where they trod."

We must now bring this long article to a close-and yet how small a portion of our author's beauties have we even hinted! We have passed over the clear majesty of the poem of "Hart leap well"-the lyrical grandeur of the Feast of Brougham Castle-the masculine energy and delicate grace of the Sonnets which with the exception perhaps of one or two of Warton and of Milton far exceed all others in our language" The Waggoner," that fine and hearty conces

sion of a water-drinker to the joys of wine and the lighthearted folly which it inspires-and numbers of smaller poems and ballads, which to the superficial observer may seem only like woodland springs, but in which he who ponders intently will discern the breakings forth of an undercurrent of thought and feeling which is silently flowing beneath him. We trust, however, we have written or rather quoted enough to induce such of our readers as hitherto have despised the poet on the faith of base or ignorant criticism to read him for themselves, especially as by the recent appearance of the Excursion in octavo, and the arrangement of the minor poems in four small volumes, the whole of his poetical works are placed within their reach. If he has little popularity with the multitude, he is rewarded by the intense veneration and love of the finest spirits of the age. Not only Coleridge, Lloyd, Southey, Wilson, and Lambwith whom his name has been usually connected-but almost all the living poets have paid eloquent homage to his genius. He is loved by Montgomery, Cornwall, and Rogers-revered by the author of Waverley-ridiculed and pillaged by Lord Byron! Jeffrey, if he begins an article on his greatest work with the pithy sentence "this will never do," glows even while he criticizes, and before he closes, though he came like Balaam to curse, like him "blesses altogether." Innumerable essays, sermons, speeches, poems-even of those who profess to despise him-are tinged by his fancy and adorned by his expressions. And there are no small number of young hearts, which have not only been enriched but renovated by his poetry—which he has expanded, purified, and exaltedand to which he has given the means of high communion with the good and the pure throughout the universe. These, equal at least in number to the original lovers of Shakspeare or of Milton, will transmit his fame to kindred spirits, and whether it shall receive or be denied the honour of fashion, it will ever be cherished by the purest of earthly minds, and connected with the most majestic of nature's scenery.

Too many of our living poets have seemed to take pride in building their fame on the sands. They have chosen for their subjects the diseases of the heart-the sad anomalies of humanity-the turbulent and guilty passions which are but for a season. Their renown, therefore, must necessarily

essence.

decline as the species advances. Instead of tracing out the lineaments of the image of God indelibly impressed on the soul, they have painted the deformities which may obscure them for awhile but can never utterly destroy them. Vice, which is the accident of our nature, has been their theme instead of those affections which are its ground-work and "Yet a little space, and that which men call evil is no more!" Yet a little space, and those wild emotionsthose horrid deeds-those strange aberrations of the soulon which some gifted bards have delighted to dwell, will fade away like the phantoms of a feverish dream. Then will poetry, like that of Wordsworth, which even now is the harbinger of a serener day, be felt and loved and held in undying honour. The genius of a poet who has chosen this high and pure career, too, will proceed in every stage of being, seeing that "it is a thing immortal as himself," and that it was ever inspired by affections which cannot die. The poet even in brighter worlds will feel, with inconceivable delight, the connexion between his earthly and celestial being -live along the golden lines of sentiment and thought back to the most delicious moments of his contemplations hereand rejoice in the recognition of those joys of which he had tastes and intimations on earth. Then shall he see the inmost soul of his poetry disclosed-grasp as assured realities the gorgeous visions of his infancy-feel “the burden of the mystery of all this unimaginable world," which were lightened to him here dissolved away-see the prophetic workings of his imagination realized-exult while "pain and anguish and the wormy grave," which here were to him "shapes of a dream," are utterly banished from the view-and listen to the full chorus of that universal harmony whose first notes he here delighted to awaken!