associated with our moral being. The pulses of the ear and the pulses of the heart are made to beat so in unison, that the sensuous and the spiritual are blended into one. This is one of the few of Wordsworth's poems prefaced by an explanatory argument, which is some indication of the depth of its inspiration. It peculiarly requires a continuous as well as thoughtful examination, but we venture to refer to some passages in it. This fragment is but a part of the range of observation :

"The headlong streams and fountains

Serve Thee, invisible Spirit, with untired powers;
Cheering the wakeful tent on Syrian mountains,
They lull, perchance, ten thousand thousand flowers.
That roar, the prowling lion's Here I am,

How fearful to the desert wide!

That bleat, how tender! of the dam
Calling a straggler to her side.

Shout, cuckoo!-let the vernal soul

Go with thee to the frozen zone;

Toll from thy loftiest perch, lone bell-bird, toll!
At the still hour to Mercy dear,

Mercy from her twilight throne

Listening to nun's faint throb of holy fear,

To sailor's prayer breathed from a darkening sea,
Or widow's cottage lullaby.

Ye Voices, and Ye Shadows,

And Images of voice to hound and horn
From rocky steep and rock-bestudded meadows
Flung back, and in the sky's blue caves, reborn-
On with your pastime! till the church-tower bells
A greeting give of measured glee;

And milder echoes from their cells
Repeat the bridal symphony.
Then, or far earlier, let us rove

Where mists are breaking up, or gone,
And from aloft look down into a cove
Besprinkled with a careless quire,
Happy milk maids, one by one

Scattering a ditty, each to her desire,

A liquid concert, matchless by nice Art,

A stream as if from one full heart.

Blest be the song that brightens

The blind man's gloom, exalts the veteran's mirth ;
Unscorned the peasant's whistling breath, that lightens
His duteous toil of furrowing the green earth;

For the tired slave, Song lifts the languid oar,
And bids it aptly fall, with chime
That beautifies the fairest shore,
And mitigates the harshest clime.

The passage of deepest impression, and manifesting how faithfully Wordsworth clings to the real heart of human nature, is the sublime recalling of his imagination from its flights into the region of fable:

- thy skill, Arion!

Could humanize the creatures of the sea,

Where men were monsters. A last grace he craves,
Leave for one chant; the dulcet sound

Steals from the deck o'er willing waves,
And listening dolphins gather round.
Self-cast, as with a desperate course,
'Mid that strange audience, he bestrides.
A proud One, docile as a managed horse;
And singing, while the accordant hand
Sweeps his harp, the Master rides ;

So shall he touch at length a friendly strand,
And he, with his preserver, shine star-bright
In memory, through silent night.

The pipe of Pan, to shepherds

Couched in the shadow of Mænalian pines,
Was passing sweet; the eye-balls of the leopards
That in high triumph drew the Lord of vines,
How did they sparkle to the cymbal's clang!
While Fauns and Satyrs beat the ground
In cadence, -and Silenus swang

This way and that, with wild-flowers crowned.
To life, to life give back thine ear :

Ye who are longing to be rid

Of fable, though to truth subservient, hear
The little sprinkling of cold earth that fell
Echoed from the coffin-lid;

The convict's summons in the steeple's knell ;
The vain distress-gun' from a leeward shore
Repeated heard and heard no more!”

There is the might of Wordsworth's genius, in thus awakening a sense of the loftiest moral sublimity by the utterance of simple truth and in simple language. But his soaring is carried higher into a sphere yet holier. It is characteristic that a

theme so palpably sensuous is associated with even more than the emotions of the heart. The labyrinth of the ear, in common with all that is material, is perishable; but relief from the burden of that thought is not looked for in any mere fancy. The resting place of Wordsworth's spirit is the lap of Faith-and the poem finds its sublime close in the truth of Christian revelation :

"The heavens, whose aspect makes our minds as still
As they themselves appear to be,

Innumerable voices fill

With everlasting harmony;

The towering headlands, crowned with mist,

Their feet among the billows, know

That Ocean is a mighty harmonist;

Thy pinions, universal Air,

Ever waving to and fro,

Are delegates of harmony, and bear

Strains that support the Seasons in their round;
Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound.

Break forth into thanksgiving,

Ye banded instruments of wind and chords;

Unite, to magnify the Ever-living,

Your inarticulate notes with the voice of words!

Nor hushed be service from the lowing mead,

Nor mute the forest hum of noon;

Thou too be heard, lone eagle! freed
From snowy peak and cloud, attune
Thy hungry barkings to the hymn
Of joy, that from her utmost walls
The six days' Work, by flaming Seraphim,
Transmits to Heaven! As Deep to Deep
Shouting through one valley calls,

All worlds, all natures, mood and measure keep
For praise and ceaseless gratulation, poured
Into the ear of God, their Lord!

A Voice to Light gave Being;

To Time, and Man his earth-born chronicler,
A Voice shall finish doubt and dim foreseeing,

And sweep away life's visionary stir;

The trumpet (we, intoxicate with pride,
Arm at its blast for deadly wars)

To archangelic lips applied,

The grave shall open, quench the stars.

O Silence! are Man's noisy years

No more than moments of thy life?

Is Harmony, blest queen of smiles and tears,
With her smooth tones and discords just,

Tempered into rapturous strife,

Thy destined bond-slave? No! though earth be dust
And vanish, though the heavens dissolve, her stay

Is in the WORD, that shall not pass away."

In Wordsworth's poetry treating of character and the affections, we discover even more of his fearless and affectionate confidence in truth, He sought in humble and rustic life materials for his imagination, "because," (among other reasons assigned by him,) in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language, -and because our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated." (Preface.) Believing that the heart might be better studied, when divested of its artificial and arbitrary feelings, he turned to that portion of his kind, in which he could look on "men as they are men within themselves." But beside this professional motive, there was another impulse for his well-matured design of reclaiming a desolate tract of poetry a region of humanity not really touched by the artificial poets that had been in the ascendant so long. Not a few of Wordsworth's poems were composed with the hope of their contributing to arrest the rapid decay, he had observed, of the home-affections among the lower orders of society-an evil resulting partly from some legislative measures and various social devices, inimical to independent domestic life. A private letter, accompanying the "Lyrical Ballads," was addressed to Charles James Fox by Wordsworth in 1801. This letter, which states some of the writer's poetical principles, and does great honor to his heart, has been recently published in a life of Sir Thomas Hanmer, and has reached us while this article is in preparation. The two poems, "The Brothers," and "Michael," to which Mr. Fox's attention was invited, were designed, as the letter states, for pictures of the domestic affections as known to exist amongst a rural class in the north of England- and "to show that men who do not wear fine clothes can feel deeply." "The poems," the writer adds, "are faithful copies from nature; and I hope, whatever effect they may have upon you, you will at least be able to perceive that they may excite profitable sympathies in many kind and good hearts, and may in some

some small degree enlarge our feelings of reverence for our species, and our knowledge of human nature, by showing that our best qualities are possessed by men whom we are too apt to consider, not with reference to the points in which they resemble us, but to those in which they manifestly differ from us." It is thus the honorable the Christian aim of much of Wordsworth's poetry, to persuade mankind of their common human-heartednessto correct whatever moral evil results from artificial divisions of society to disclose the natural dignity of humble life, and to create a sympathy with it in other ranks. The broken fellowship of our race, is one of the sorrows of humanity prompting the pathetic lament - "Alas! what differs more than man from man!" in the last book of the Excursion.

It is seen then that Wordsworth's predilection for the departments of daily life is not a mere intellectual choice of an apt subject, but a moral impulse, and when it is vindicated on principles of taste alone, the deeper and worthier motive is lost sight of. There is something noble in the fervor and fearlessness with which he embarks in the cause of the simple forms of hu→ manity :

"Long have I loved what I behold,

The night that calms, the day that cheers;
The common growth of mother-earth
Suffices me-her tears, her mirth,

Her humblest mirth and tears.

The dragon's wing, the magic ring,
I shall not covet for my dower,
If I along that lowly way
With sympathetic heart may stray
And with a soul of power.

These given, what more need I desire

To stir, to soothe, or elevate?

What nobler marvels than the mind
May in life's daily prospect find,

May find or there create ?".

Peter Bell.

It is, however, a false, because a partial, estimate of Wordsworth's poetry that it is exclusively devoted to humble life. Its purpose is more comprehensive; first, to rescue from neglect the forlorn conditions, and then, to create an uninterrupted sympathy along the whole scale of society-feelings that can stoop as well as soar: