The countrymen, who on their way to church,
Were leaning o'er the bridge, loitering to hear
The bell's last summons, and in idleness
Watching the stream below, would all look up
When she pass'd by. And her old Grandam, Charles,--
When I have heard some erring infidel
Speak of our faith as of a gloomy creed,
Inspiring superstitious wretchedness,
Her figure has recurr'd; for she did love

The Sabbath-day; and many a time hath cross'd
These fields in rain and through the winter snows,
When I, a graceless boy, and cold of foot,
Wishing the weary service at its end,

Have wonder'd wherefore that good dame came there,
Who if it pleased her, might have staid beside

A comfortable fire.

Hung on her aged spirit.

Her path was plain before

"One only care

For herself

her, and the close

Of her long journey near. But then her child,
Soon to be left alone in this bad world, . . .
That was a thought which many a winter night
Had kept her sleepless; and when prudent love
In something better than a servant's state
Had placed her well at last, it was a pang
Like parting life to part with her dear girl.
One summer, Charles, when at the holidays
Return'd from school, I visited again

My old accustom'd walks, and found in them
A joy almost like meeting an old friend,
I saw the cottage empty, and the weeds
Already crowding the neglected flowers.
Joanna, by a villain's wiles seduced,

Had play'd the wanton, and that blow had reach'd
Her grandam's heart. She did not suffer long;
Her age was feeble, and this mortal grief
Brought her grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.

And think of other days. It wakes in me

A transient sadness; but the feelings, Charles,
Which ever with these recollections rise,

I trust in God they will not pass away."

TALBOT. A quiet poem, which from its soberness of expression might suit a Quaker poet. If every poem should be read at an hour specially adapted to give it effect, I would choose for the "Ruined Cottage" the hour after sunset on one of those grey, still evenings, when the clouds float heavily over the landscape-when every sound is hushed-and the subdued and fast-fading light gives a mournful beauty to the scene.

HARTLEY. Then the poem, I suppose, may be likened to a pretty Quakeress, whose placid features, and passionless expression, harmonize with the comely drab dress which covers—or, if she wear crinoline-environs her graceful figure.

STANLEY. A Friend wear crinoline! Shame on you to suppose that any of those dove-coloured and dove-souled Christians would yield so far to earthly vanities. Shade of Bernard Barton arise, and defend the sisterhood from a libel!

TALBOT. I have already noticed an opinion I recently met with in the British Quarterly concerning poetic criticism; and our mention of Southey has reminded me of an observation, or rather of two, which I read and laughed over in the same journal a few years ago. The sage critic knowingly observed, that Southey was "a man of some genius;" and, after making this original remark, presumed to doubt "if any of his prose writings-good as

his prose style is- will be read by the next generation." If I could inflict a suitable penance on that reviewer for his presumption, I would compel him to copy out the whole of "The Doctor," and to learn the "Life of Nelson" by heart.

HARTLEY. I like these eccentric opinions now and then. They serve to show the worth, or worthlessness of criticism. Yet we must not forget that great writers, as well as small critics, blunder sometimes in this way. Have we not had many instances of this already? and it would be easy to add to the number from the writings of Southey and of Wordsworth. Southey, however, was more generous in his sympathies and more catholic in his taste than his brother bard.

TALBOT. I have yet to learn that Wordsworth cared much for the poetry of his great contemporaries. For Southey's he had a qualified admiration. He considered Shelley one of the best of modern poets with regard to workmanship of style. Goethe he could not tolerate, and Schiller, I believe, he did not read. Byron he thought deficient in feeling and careless in composition. Scott he regarded as superficial, and said that his descriptions are addressed to the ear, not to the mind. Of Moore, he observed: "His poems smell of the perfumer's and milliner's shops. He is not content with a ring and a bracelet, but he must have rings in the ears, rings on the noserings everywhere." Coleridge, however, he deemed the most wonderful man he had ever known, and averred his belief that in poetry he might have done more permanently to enrich the literature, and to influence the thought of the nation, than any man of the age. Writing to

Professor Hamilton, in 1832, he said: "He and my beloved sister are the two beings to whom my intellect is most indebted."*

STANLEY. Wordsworth shrunk from expressing in his poetry the deepest feelings of his soul,-those, I mean, which sprung from his faith in the great truths of Christianity. Yet he is essentially a Christian poet, and on all his poetry shines a light from heaven. Nature herself, he declares boldly, cannot be understood without divine teaching; neither can she, if unaided, administer peace to the soul.

"By grace divine,

Not otherwise, O Nature! we are thine,
Through good and evil thine, in just degree
Of rational and manly sympathy.

To all that Earth from pensive hearts is stealing,
And Heaven is now to gladden'd eyes revealing,
Add every charm the Universe can show,
Through every change its aspects undergo-
Care may be respited, but not repeal'd;
No perfect cure grows on that bounded field.
Vain is the pleasure, a false calm the peace,
If He, through whom alone our conflicts cease,
Our virtuous hopes without relapse advance,
Come not to speed the Soul's deliverance;
To the distemper'd Intellect refuse,

His gracious help, or give what we abuse."

HARTLEY. This is true philosophy, and worthy of a great poet; but it was written when Wordsworth was more than sixty years of age. In his earlier poems Nature, as in the lines written above Tintern Abbey, appeared to be all-sufficing.

* Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 260.

STANLEY. Wordsworth was one of the most accurate observers of Nature that ever lived. He never blunders, because he never describes what he had not himself observed or experienced. He may not be always happy in his illustrations; he does sometimes-and too often"choose," as Sir Walter Scott said, "to crawl on allfours," but he never inflicts upon his readers what musicians term a false concord. De Quincey, in his "Autobiographic Sketches," notices the happy manner in which, even in his early poems, the poet described rural sights or sounds; and quotes a passage in which one of the common-places which lend animation and a moral interest to rural life, is happily caught and preserved.

"Sweetly ferocious, round his native walks,
Pride of his sister-wives, the monarch stalks ;
Spur-clad his nervous feet, and firm his tread ;
A crest of purple tops the warrior's head.
Bright sparks his black and rolling eye-ball hurls
Afar, his tail he closes and unfurls ;

On tiptoe rear'd, he strains his clarion throat,

Threaten'd by faintly-answering farms remote.”

The rural accident noted in this last line had never before, says Mr. De Quincey, "been consciously taken up for a poet's use." With such lines indeed, describing by a choice epithet or a felicitous phrase some country sight or sound, Wordsworth's volumes abound. A slight search through them would provide us with many notable examples.

TALBOT. I do not doubt it. Nevertheless, I protest against such a search being made. Wordsworth's poetry will endure this detachment better than that of most great