Page images
PDF
EPUB

"Thus having reached a bridge, that overarched
The hasty rivulet, where it lay becalmed

In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw
A twofold image; on a grassy bank
A snow-white Ram, and in the crystal flood
Another and the same! Most beautiful
On the green turf, with his imperial front
Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb,
The breathing creature stood; as beautiful
Beneath him, showed his shadowy counterpart ;
Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky,
And each seem'd centre of his own fair world.
Antipodes unconscious of each other,
Yet, in partition, with their several spheres,
Blended in perfect stillness to our sight.
Ah! what a pity were it to disperse
Or to disturb, so fair a spectacle,
And yet a breath can do it."

Oh! that the Solitary, and the Pedlar, and the Poet, and the Priest and his Lady, were here to see a sight more glorious far than that illustrious and visionary Ram. Two Christopher Norths-as Highland chieftains in the Royal Tartan-one burning in the air-the other in the water-two stationary meteors, each seeming native to its own element. This setting the heather, that the linn on fire-this a-blaze with war, that tempered into truce while the Sun, astonied at the spectacle, nor knowing the refulgent substance from the resplendent shadow, bids the clouds lie still in heaven, and the winds all hold their breath, that exulting nature may be permitted for a little while to enjoy the miracle she unawares has wrought-alas! gone as she gazes, and gone for ever? Our bonnet has tumbled into the Pooland Christopher-like the Ram in the Excursion-stands shorn of his beams -no better worth looking at than the late Laird of Macnab.

Now, since the truth must be told, that was but a flight of Fancy-and our apparel is more like that of a Lowland Quaker than a Highland chief. 'Tis all of a snuffy brown-an excellent colour for hiding the dirt. Singlebreasted our coatee-and we are in shorts. Were our name to be imposed by our hat, it would be Sir Cloudesly Shovel. On our back a wallet-and in our hand a pole. And thus, not without occasional alarm to the cattle, though we hurry no man's, we go stalking along the sward and swinging across the stream, and leaping over the quagmires-by no means unlike that extraordinary pedestrian who has been accompanying us for the last

half hour, far overhead up by yonder, as if he meant mischief; but he will find that we are up to a trick or two, and not easily to be done brown by a native, a Cockney of Cloud- Land, a long-legged awkward fellow with a head like a dragon, and proud of his red plush, in that country called thunder-and-lightning breeches, hot very, one should think, in such sultry weather-but confound us if he has not this moment stript them off, and be not pursuing his journey in puris naturalibus-yes, as naked as the minute he was born!

We cannot help flattering ourselves if indeed it be flattery-that though no relative of his, we have a look of the Pedlar-as he is painted by the hand of a great master in the aforesaid Poem.

"A man of reverend age,

But stout and hale, for travel unimpaired.'

An hour or two ago,

"Here was he seen upon the cottage-
bench,

Recumbent in the shade, as if asleep;
An iron-pointed staff lay at his side.'

Again-any one who had chanced to meet us yesterday on our way to the mountains, might have said,

"Him had I marked the day before

alone,

And stationed in the public way, with face
Turned to the sun then setting, while that
staff

Afforded to the figure of the man,
Detained for contemplation or repose,
Graceful support," &c.

And again and even more characteristically—

"Plain was his garb : Such as might suit a rustic sire, prepared For Sabbath duties; yet he was a man Whom no one could have passed without remark.

Active and nervous was his gait; his limbs And his whole figure breathed intelligence.

Time had compressed the freshness of his cheeks

Into a narrower circle of deep red, But had not tamed his eye, that under brows,

Shaggy and grey, had meanings, which it brought

From years of youth; whilst, like a being made

Of many beings, he had wondrous skill To blend with knowledge of the years to come,

Human, or such as lie beyond the grave."

In our intellectual characters, we indulge the pleasing hope, that there are some striking points of resemblance, on which, however, our modesty will not permit us to dwell-and in our acquirements, more particularly in Plane and Spherical Trigonometry. "While yet he lingered in the rudiments Of science, and among her simplest laws, His triangles- they were the stars of

Heaven.

The silent stars! oft did he take delight To measure the altitude of some tall crag,

That is the eagle's birthplace," &c. So it was with us. Give us but a base and a quadrant-and when a student in Jemmy Millar's class, we could have given you the altitude of any steeple in Glasgow or the Gorbals.

Like the Pedlar, in a small party of friends, though not proud of the accomplishment, we have been prevailed on to give a song-" The Flowers of the Forest," "Roy's Wife," or " Auld Langsyne"

"At request would sing Old songs, the product of his native

hills;

A skilful distribution of sweet sounds,
Feeding the soul, and eagerly imbibed
As cool refreshing water, by the care
Of the industrious husbandman, diffused
Through a parch'd meadow-field in time

of drought."

Our natural disposition, too, is as amiable as that of the "Vagrant Merchant."

"And surely never did there live on earth

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

The mute fish, that glances in the stream,"

is not incompatible with the practice of the "angler's silent trade," or with the pleasure of " filling our panniers." The Pedlar, too, we have reason to know, was, like his poet and ourselves a craftsman, and for love beat the molecatcher at busking a batch of May-flies. The question whether Lascelles himself were his master at a green dragon,

"The harmless reptile coiling in the sun," we are not so sure about, having once been bit by an adder, whom, in our simplicity, we mistook for a slow-worm

the very day, by the by, on which we were poisoned by a dish of toadstools, by our own hand gathered for mushrooms. But we have long given over chasing butterflies, and feel, as the Pedlar did, that they are beautiful creatures, and that 'tis a sin, between finger and thumb, to compress their mealy wings. The household dog we do, indeed, dearly love, though, when old Surly looks suspicious, we prudently keep out of the reach of his chain. As for "the domestic fowl," we breed scores every spring, solely for the delight of seeing them at their walks,

"Among the rural villages and farms;" and though game to the back-bone, they are all allowed to wear the spurs nature gave them-to crow unclipped, challenging but the echoes; nor is the sward, like the sod, ever reddened

with their heroic blood, for hateful to our ears the war-song,

"Welcome to your gory bed,

Or to victory!"

"Tis our way to pass from gay to grave matter, and often from a jocular to a serious view of the same subject

And the influence of such education and occupation among such natural objects, Wordsworth expounds in some as fine poetry as ever issued from the cells of philosophic thought,

"So the foundations of his mind were laid."

"For many a tale

it being natural to us-and having be. The boy had small need of books— come habitual from writing occasionally in Blackwood's Magazine. All the world knows our admiration of Wordsworth, and admits that we have done almost as much as Jeffrey to make his poetry popular among the "educated circles." But we are not a nation of idolators, and worship neither graven image nor man that is born of a woman. We may seem to have treated the Pedlar with insufficient respect in that playful parallel between him and ourselves; but there you are wrong again, for we desire thereby to do him honour. We wish now to say a few words on the wisdom of making such a personage the chief character in the Excursion.

Traditionary, round the mountains hung, And many a legend, peopling the dark woods,

Nourished Imagination in her growth, And gave the mind that apprehensive power

He is described as endowed by nature with a great intellect, a noble imagination, a profound soul, and a tender heart. It will not be said that

nature keeps these her noblest gifts for human beings born in this or that condition of life: she gives them to her favourites-for so, in the highest sense, they are to whom such gifts befall; and not unfrequently, in an obscure place, of one of the FORTU

NATI

"The fulgent head

Star-bright appears."
Wordsworth appropriately places the
birth of such a being in a humble
dwelling in the Highlands of Scot-
land.

"Among the hills of Athol he was born;
Where on a small hereditary farm,
An unproductive slip of barren ground,
His parents, with their numerous offspring
dwelt ;

A virtuous household, though exceeding
poor."

His childhood was nurtured at home in Christian love and truth-and acquired other knowledge at a winter school-for in summer he "tended cattle on the hill"—

[blocks in formation]

By which she is made quick to recognise
The moral properties and scope of things."
But in the Manse there were books—
and he read

"Whate'er the minister's old shelf sup-
plied,

The life and death of martyrs, who sus-
tained,

With will inflexible, those fearful pangs,
Triumphantly displayed in records left
Of persecution and the Covenant."

Can you not believe that by the time he was as old as you were when you used to ride to the races on a poney, by the side of your sire the squire, this boy was your equal in tutor all to yourself, and were then a knowledge, though you had a private promising lad, as indeed you are now after the lapse of a quarter of a century? True, as yet he "had small Latin, and no Greek ;" but the ele ments of these languages are best learned-trust us-by slow degreesby the mind rejoicing in the consciousness of its growing facultiesduring leisure hours from other studies-as they were by the Athol adolescent. A Scholar-in your sense of the word he might not be called, even when he had reached his seventeenth year, though probably he would have puzzled you in Livy and Virgil-nor of English poetry had he read much-the less the better for such a mind-at that age, and in that condition-for

"Accumulated feelings pressed his heart
With still increasing weight; he was o'er-
powered

By nature, by the turbulence subdued
Of his own mind, by mystery and hope,
And the first virgin passion of a soul
Communing with the glorious Universe."

[blocks in formation]

Of many beings, he had wondrous skill To blend with knowledge of the years to come,

Human, or such as lie beyond the grave."

In our intellectual characters, we indulge the pleasing hope, that there are some striking points of resemblance, on which, however, our modesty will not permit us to dwell-and in our acquirements, more particularly in Plane and Spherical Trigonometry. "While yet he lingered in the rudiments Of science, and among her simplest laws, His triangles- they were the stars of Heaven.

The silent stars! oft did he take delight To measure the altitude of some tall

[blocks in formation]

A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports

And teasing ways of children vexed not him :

Indulgent listener was he to the tongue Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale,

To his fraternal sympathy addressed,
Obtain reluctant hearing."

Who can read the following lines, and not think of Christopher North?

"

"Birds and beasts,

And the mute fish, that glances in the stream,

And harmless reptile coiling in the sun, And gorgeous insect hovering in the air, The fowl domestic, and the household dog

In his capacious mind he loved them all." True that our love of

The mute fish, that glances in the stream,"

is not incompatible with the practice of the "angler's silent trade," or with the pleasure of " filling our panniers." The Pedlar, too, we have reason to know, was, like his poet and ourselves-a craftsman, and for love beat the molecatcher at busking a batch of May-flies. The question whether Lascelles himself were his master at a green dragon,

"The harmless reptile coiling in the sun,"

we are not so sure about, having once been bit by an adder, whom, in our simplicity, we mistook for a slow-worm

the very day, by the by, on which we were poisoned by a dish of toadstools, by our own hand gathered for mushrooms. But we have long given over chasing butterflies, and feel, as the Pedlar did, that they are beautiful creatures, and that 'tis a sin, between finger and thumb, to compress their mealy wings. The household dog we do, indeed, dearly love, though, when old Surly looks suspicious, we prodently keep out of the reach of his chai

[graphic]
[graphic]
[blocks in formation]

The boy had small need of books

"For many a tale Traditionary, round the mountains hung, And many a legend, peopling the dark woods,

Nourished Imagination in her growth,
And gave the mind that apprehensive
power

By which she is made quick to recognise
The moral properties and scope of things."
But in the Manse there were books__
and he read

"Whate'er the minister's old shelf sup-
plied,

The life and death of martyrs, who sus-
tained,

With will inflexible, those fearful pangs,
Triumphantly displayed in records left
Of persecution and the Covenant."

time he was as old as you were when Can you not believe that by the you used to ride to the races on a Poney, by the side of your sire the squire, this boy was your equal in tutor all to yourself, and were then a knowledge, though you had a private promising lad, as indeed you are now tury? True, as yet he had small after the lapse of a quarter of a cenLatin, and no Greek;" but the elements of these languages are best learned-trust us-by slow degreesby the mind rejoicing in the consciousness of its growing facultiesduring leisure hours from other studies-as they were by the Athol adolescent. A Scholar-in your sense

**Among the hills of Athol was born; of the word-he might not be called,

ng

even when he had reached his seventeenth year, though probably he would have puzzled you in Livy and Virgil-nor of English poetry had ing he read much-the less the better for such a mind-at that age, and in that condition-for

home and aca winter "tended

[blocks in formation]

By nature, by the turbulence subdued Of his own mind, by mystery and hope, untain's dreary And the first virgin passion of a soul Communing with the glorious Universe."

« PreviousContinue »