That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; 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, On earth was never sown; This child I to myself will take, Myself will to the darling be Both law and impulse: and with me In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, To kindle or restrain. She shall be sportive as the fawn, And her's shall be the breathing balm, 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, 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, Whatever in those climes he found A kindred impulse, seem'd allied The workings of his heart. Nor less to feed voluptuous thought, The breezes their own languor lent; 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, 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, Princes and emperors, and the crowns and palms 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 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, To grant, or be received, while that poor bird, -O come and hear him! Thou who hast to me As if he wish'd the firmament of Heaven Such was the tender passage, not by me |