humble life might, and did often, touch his better feelings and excite him to a noble and a true generosity. But what if that poor man had thrown himself across the path of his voluptuous desires, and set himself with a noble firmness against his self-willed purposes; would he have bethought himself with kindness of the fellow of his race, the inheritor with him of a common humanity? No: he would have struck him to the earth as base, low-born, the scorn of created things.

Wordsworth is not thus fitful and passionate in his views of humanity. The accidents of birth and of station do not move him to an ignorant contempt of those who in these points are his inferiors, which may now and then yield to a stupid gaze of wonder; such as the proud affect, when they are forced to acknowledge human intelligence and human feeling in the walks of humbler life. The contrary of all this is true of him. In his search for huinan nature in those forms in which it is most perfectly developed and seen in its truest proportions, he has left the higher ranks of society, has passed by the accomplished and graceful man of rank, the busy tradesman, and the scheming agriculturist, and has gone to the obscurest corner of his native land. He has studied the human soul as it appears in huts where poor men lie." The dalesmen of Westmoreland, with a simplicity of character and manners more primitive than New-England ever saw, even in its most primitive age, have been the men with whom he has mingled his sympathies. Into the lowly huts of these poor but noble men has he passed, from the saloons of the proud which he might have graced by his presence; from the halls of the learned which he might have honored, and from the busy mart where he might have wrought out for himself wealth and independence. But we will not call these men poor. They are rich in intelligence; they are rich in that intellectual activity which is awake to all that is going on about itself; they are rich in strong and vigorous emotions which gush forth with the force of their own mountain-torrents; and more than all, they are rich in habits and principles as rugged and as firmly rooted, as are the hills around their cottages. From the humanity which he has observed in those cottages, has he derived his conceptions of what it is to be indeed a man ; and for having dared to avow his convictions, he has been scorned by those whom he has pronounced inferior to these humble inhabitants. Those who would acquaint themselves more particularly with the character of these inhabitants, we would refer to the various notices of them which are scattered through his poetical works, and also to a volume of his in prose, entitled "A description of the scenery of the lakes in the north of England." This little essay, originally attached to his poetical works but now published by itself, has never been re-printed in this country. This is much

to be regretted, as, aside from its intrinsic worth, it is the best possible commentary on the poems of the author.

Convinced, as our poet had become, that the human character as developed in a state of society like that described by him, is an object of the highest interest, and is worthy of the most attentive study, and avowing this conviction,—we do not wonder, that he excited the sneers of those, who, dwelling in cities, were gravely pronounced inferior, in all that is truly noble in human character, to men entirely unacquainted with every thing which to themselves constitutes life. Still less do we wonder, that when he came forth boldly, and portrayed the humanity with which he had there become familiar, in the garb of a pedler and a leech-gatherer; dignified in all his associations for the simplicity and freshness of its feelings, and its sterling moral worth; that the garb in which he set it forth, and the characters under which he caused it to appear, should have excited associations ludicrous, and only ludicrous, in the minds of most of his readers. That in the ardor of his early zeal the poet erred, we are free to confess. That he offended needlessly against the preconceived opinions of his readers and their cherished habits, we grant; but we find in this fact no excuse for their reception of his works. Under every form we pronounce it to have been disingenuous and base.

His opinions on this subject we believe to be true. We believe, that all which is worthy man's attainment, can be and is realized in far higher perfection amid the genial influences of rural life, than in the hot and unquiet atmosphere of the crowded city. "God made the country, and man made the town ;" and, as their authors, so are their works. The modes of living, the habits of intellectual activity, the character of the emotions, both in strength and refinement, and the moral and religious worth, which are formed by the one, are not in our opinion to be compared with those that grow up in the other. May we say also, and be heard with patience, that it would be well for our country were greater heed given to this fact, and if those who are anxious to train their fellow-men to true greatness, did better know wherein true greatness consists, and under what influences it grows up to its true height and just proportions. But what is the fact? Our great cities are fast centering every thing within themselves; even our little villages are counted prosperous and flourishing, the more nearly they resemble a single crowded and busy street of the metropolis. Our religious and benevolent movements are decided on too much in the fashion of the exchange, and with a reference too exclusively to the condition of things in the corrupt population of a large city. Our learned men, in increasing numbers, resort to cities to breathe the exciting literary atmosphere which there collects itself; and

they seem to prefer this atmosphere to "the quiet and still air of delightful studies." As a consequence, our ministry are becoming more and more convulsive and startling in their efforts, rather than increasing in those genial and instructive performances which build up the church and speak to the consciences of the wicked; our intellectual men are more and more antithetic and abrupt in their style of thinking and writing,-selling the integrity of their intellectual character, the consistency and truth of a true intellectual cultivation, for the "golden opinions" of the day. The dignity, the permanence, the softening and awful power of "ancient manners,' are fast giving way to the desire of pleasing and being pleased, of flattering and being flattered in turn. But there is still something of old New-England remaining, and we trust that the little which does remain will be strengthened. To those parts of our population in which it is yet seen in its purity, we would advise our religious teachers, and our intellectual judges, now and then to betake themselves; and to be mindful the meanwhile, that they do not go among them to despise them, but with all humility to seat themselves at their feet, as those who are worthy to be reverenced by themselves, as teachers of what it is indeed to be men. The language of Wordsworth will express the tendencies of our own times:

'O friend! I know not which way I must look
For comfort, being, as I am, opprest

To think that now our life is drest

For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook,
Or groom! We must run glittering like a brook

In the open sunshine, or we are unblest;

The wealthiest inan among us is the best:
No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,

This is idolatry; and these we adore:

Plain living and high thinking are no more.' vol. ii. p. 325.

But to return to our poet. The men with whom he has loved to be conversant in private life, and to make the theme of his poetry, besides being formed under the healthful influences of rural life, have also been blessed by an austere morality. But though this morality is austere and rigid in its outward frame, it is not the less gentle and benignant in its influence on all that is refined in the soul. It is man under moral influences, and formed to moral habits, that is the chosen theme of this poet of humanity. In his own words:

'Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love and hope,

And melancholy fear subdued by faith;

Of blessed consolations in distress;

Of moral strength and intellectual power;
Of joy in widest commonalty spread;

Of the individual mind that keeps her own
Inviolate retirement, subject there

To conscience only, and the law supreme;
Of that Intelligence which governs all,
I sing," fit audience let me find, though few."
Vol. IV.-Preface to Excursion.

It is here, too, that he displays his highest power. It is man as a moral being, yielding himself, in the simplicity of faith, to the law of conscience, who is the object of his heartfelt reverence, and the occasion of his most inspiring strains. It is because the domestic and social life of the inhabitants of those northern vales is animated so thoroughly by high moral worth, and by genuine moral principle, that he has been so anxious to set it forth to public view, and to commend it to the esteem and the affection of his country and his race. Such a state of society, to a man of a just taste, presents one of the fairest spectacles that is ever seen on earth. But Wordsworth has not viewed it in this light alone; nor is it with a design to gratify the taste, that he has given to it so large a place in his most important works. A higher purpose rules his mind and directs all his efforts,-the air to call forth the moral feelings and to give strength to the moral purposes of his readers. If poetry in his view, as it refines our sympathies, and calls forth all that is worthy in our social nature, deserves the most laborious efforts and the loftiest aspirations on the part of the poet; much more does it, when viewed by him as molding the moral character of those on whom it exerts its power. From the outset, Wordsworth has aimed at an end no less exalted than this; and because he has made this object foremost among his aims, he has encountered an opposition sterner and more determined than from any other cause. He came before an age that was frivolous in its views, and set forth man and all that concerns him in a serious light, and as a consequence was received with scorn. What else could such critics as his were say, when he presented to their view man in inward triumphs over passion, pride, and all that is evil, and performing with a cheerful spirit, the common and lowly duties of a humble lot, as rising to the highest dignity to which man can attain? True it is indeed, that the heart which sympathizes with the deeper spirit of his works, is a heart which has been disciplined and chastened by reflection; which has been made strong by moral purposes, loved with a confiding faith, and adhered to with unyielding resolution. On the other hand, the man in whose heart pride and passion rules; who is not independent and enthusiastic in his love for truth; who regards knowledge and intellectual power as valuable for the reputation and influence to which they open the way, rather than for that perfection to the mind of man to which they contribute; such need not wonder that they find nothing in his views to which they respond. The soul is wanting in themselves, the faculty by which they can appreciate and enjoy his

works. No quiet and yet strongly moving enthusiasm will be kindled in the hearts of such, as their attention is called to those noble truths which he sets forth in their austere dignity, or as they view those characters which he commends to their veneration and love. Such judges, used only to a formal heartlessness in the intercourse between man and man, where all smile on each other when abroad, and all are "mute and sullen by the family fire-side," need not wonder that they find no charms in the bonest simplicity, the kind affections and the elevated and noble philosophy of the Wanderer, in Wordsworth's Excursion. They have never known the like in real life. There is no resemblance in the picture to any thing in earth or air, or even in their own thoughts, with which they have been acquainted; and if there were, there is no heart in them to respond to the excellence and true dignity of that which is set forth to their view. They may be very good men after their way; they may be learned and accomplished men; but not being reflecting men, or not having reflected aright, they cannot love Wordsworth, or at least love him as a teacher of moral truth.

But there are those who have endeavored to train themselves, in their inmost feelings, by the standard of truth, and to discipline themselves in accordance with her gentle precepts; and who, having at an auspicious moment become acquainted with his works, regard him in this light with the deepest reverence. Those habits of mind which they have taught themselves to regard as surpassing all the knowledge that ever burdened the memory of the mere man of information,-those feelings of confidence in the certainty of truth and of reverence for her sacred dictates, which they have cherished in spite of scorn from without, they have found springing forth from the rich mind of Wordsworth with a stately and majestic growth. To him they have repaired, believing him sincere in all that he utters, and feeling that the strains in which he has celebrated the virtues which they love, are the offspring of no fitful inspiration, but the sober utterance of his honest convictions. These are the true and hearty admirers of Wordsworth as a poet; the individuals who would realize in their own habitual feelings and in their daily lives the virtues, which, as the poet of humanity, he so sublimely sings.

Wordsworth is also the poet of nature. Indeed, it is as the poet of nature, that he is, perhaps, most frequently described and supposed to be marked by certain distinctive features. His youthful enthusiasm fastened on nature, as it would seem, as its only object, on nature he loved to gaze. Mountain, bill and valley, were to him the ministers of heartfelt delight and of satisfying enjoyment. They were more than this to him; they molded his early habits, and from the first gave a peculiar hue to all his feel