eggs are gleaming there," to him a dearer sight. He turns to the works of nature the same minutely magnifying lens as Pope to the works of art. The difference is, that while the bard of Twickenham uses his microscope to a lady's lock, or to a gentleman's clouded cane, the poet of Windermere applies it to a mountain daisy or a worn-out spade. In speaking of Wordsworth's writings, we must not omit a juvenile volume of poems, which we have never seen, but which we believe is chiefly remarkable as showing how late his genius was of flowering, and how far in youth he was from having sounded the true depths of his understanding. We have somewhere read extracts from it, which convinced us, that at an age when Campbell wrote his "Pleasures of Hope," Pope his sparkling "Essay on Criticism," Keats his "Hyperion," Wordsworth, so far from being a like miracle of precocity, could only produce certain puerile prettinesses, with all the merit which arises from absence of fault, but with all the fault which arises from absence of merit. genius, never submits to a degrading vassal- | star. Talk of the Pleiades! "Lo, five blue age. Destitute of Milton's scholastic training, it has evidently gone through the still severer crucible of a self-taught and sublime metaphysics. His imagination, again, is not rich and copious like Spenser's, nor is it omnivorous and omnific like Shakspeare's, nor uniformly gigantic like Milton's, nor is it the mere handmaid of the passions like Byron's, nor voluptuous and volatile like Moore's, nor fastidious like Campbell's, nor fantastic like Southey's. It is calm, profound, still, obscure, like the black eye of one of his own tarns. The objects he sets before us are few; the colors he uses are uniform; the tone is somewhat sombre, but the impression and intensity with which they stamp themselves on the view are immense. A sonnet with Wordsworth often goes as far as an ordinary epic; a single line does the work of an ordinary canto. This power of concentration, however, is only occasional-it is spontaneous, not involuntary, and alternates with a fine diffusion, so that, while at one time he compresses meaning into his words as with the Bramah press of Young, at another his poetry is as loosely and beautifully dispread as the blank-verse of Wilson or Graham. But that which undoubtedly gives to the poetry of Wordsworth its principal power is its personal interest. His works are all confessions, not of crimes, (unless to love nature too well be a sin,) but of all the peculiarities of a poetical temperament. He retains and reproduces the boyish feelings which others lose with their leading-strings; he carries forward the first fresh emotions of childhood into the powers and passions of manhoodhe links the cradle to the crutch by the strong tie of his genius. Nothing which reminds him of his own youth-which awakens some old memory-which paints on an airy canvass some once familiar face-which vibrates on some half-forgotten string, comes amiss to Wordsworth. His antiquity may be said to begin with his own birth; his futurity to extend to the day of his own funeral. His philosophy may be summed up in the one sentence, "the child is father of the man." If we were to try to express our idea of Wordsworth's poetry in a word, we might call it microscopic. Many apply a telescope to nature, to enlarge the great; he employs a microscope to magnify the small. Many, in their daring flights, treat a constellation with as much familiarity as if it were a bunch of violets; he leans over a violet with as much interest and reverence as if it were a The "Lyrical Ballads" was the first effusion of his mind which bore the broad arrow of a peculiar genius; the first to cluster round him troops of devoted friends, and the first to raise against him that storm of ridicule, badinage, abuse, and misrepresentation, which has so recently been laid forever. And, looking back upon this production through the vista of years, we cannot wonder that it should so have struck the mind of the public. Poetry was reduced to its beggarly elements. In the florid affectation of Darwin, and the tame, yet turgid verse of Hayley, it was breathing its last. Cowper, meanwhile, had maddened and died. It was not surprising, that in the dreary dearth which succeeded, a small bunch of wild flowers, with the scent of the moors, and the tints of the sun, and the freshness of the dew upon them, shot suddenly into the hands of the public, should attract immediate notice; that while they disgusted the fastidious, they should refresh the dispirited lovers of truth and nature; that, while the vain and the worldly tore and trampled them under foot with fierce shouts of laughter, the simple-hearted took them up and folded them to their bosoms; and that while the old, prepossessed in favor of Pope and Voltaire, threw them aside as insipid, the young, inspired by the first outbreak of the French Revolution, and flushed by its golden hopes, caught and kissed them in a transport of enthusiasm. Such a bunch were the "Lyrical Ballads," and such was their reception. Destitute of all glitter, glare, pretension, they were truly "wildings of nature." Not that they mirrored the utmost depth or power of their author's mind-not that they gave more than glimpses of the occasional epic grandeur of the " Excursion," or the Miltonic music of the "Sonnets ;"--but they discovered all the simplicity, if not all the strength of his genius. They were like droppings from the rich honey-comb of his mind. Their faults we seek not to disguise or palliate the wilful puerility, the babyish simplicity which a few of them affected-but still, as long as Derwentwater reflects the burning west in her bosom, and Windermere smiles to her smiling shores, and the Langdale Giants "parley with the setting sun,' shall men remember Harry Gill, chattering forever more; and Ruth with the water-mills of her innocence, and the "tumultuous songs" of her frenzy; and Andrew Jones, with his everlasting drum; and the Indian mother, with her heart-broken woes; and last, not least, glorious old Matthew, with his merry rhymes and melancholy moralizings. passing over one smaller poem of exquisite beauty on the "Eclipse in Italy," and with still more reluctance" Laodamia," the most chaste and classic of his strains, and which, says one, "might have been read aloud in Elysium to the happy dead," we would offer a few remarks upon the huge half-finished pile called the "Excursion," the national monument of its author's mind. It professes to be part of a poem called the "Recluse." So many witty, or wouldbe witty things, have been said about this profession by so many critics and criticasters, that we have not a single joke to crack on the subject. The magnitude of the entire poem is to us, as well as to them, a wonder and a mystery. Its matter is a topic more attractive. We remember asking De Quincey if he had seen the "Recluse," and why it was not given to the world? He answered, that he had read, or heard read, large portions of it; that the principal reason for its non-publication as yet was, that it contained (who would have expected it!) much that was political, if not personal, and drew with a strong and unflattering hand some of the leading characters of the day. He added that it abounded with passages equal to anything in the "Excursion," and instanced one, descriptive of France during the Revolution, contrasting the beauty and fertility of its vine-covered valleys and summer landscapes with the dark and infernal passions which were then working like lava in the minds of its inhabitants, as magnificent. The next poetic production from his pen was entitled, "Poems, in two volumes." And here, interspersed with much of the childishness of the Ballads, are some strains of a far higher mood. Here we meet, for instance, with the song of Brougham Castle, that splendid lyric which stirs the blood like the first volley of a great battle. Here too, are some of his sonnets, the finest we think, ever written, combining the simplicity, without the bareness of Milton's, the tender and picturesque beauty of Warton's, with qualities which are not prominent in theirs-originality of sentiment, beauty of expression, and lofti-ingly. A finished production it certainly ness of tone. Passing over his after effusions-his "Peter Bell" and the Wagoner," two things resembling rather the wilder mood of Coleridge than the sobriety of their actual parent, and bis "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," a production scarcely worthy of the subject or author, though relieved by gleams of real poetry, and the White Doe of Rylstone," with this single remark that of all the severe criticisms inflicted on Wordsworth, the review of this particular poem in the Edinburgh stands facile princeps for glaring injustice; and his series of "Sonnets on the River Duddon," a most original and happy thought, which we would like to see applied to other streams, as the Tay, the Earn, the Nith, the Dee, &c. So much for the "Recluse," which the people of the millennium may possibly see. The "Excursion," professing to be only part of a poem, was, nevertheless, criticised as a finished production, and condemned accord is not. Cumbrous, digressive, unwieldy, The it, the greater grandeur which our system possesses from its central principle, the Unity of the Divine Nature; a doctrine which collects all the scattered rays of beauty and excellence from every quarter of the universe, and condenses them into one august and overpowering conception; which traces back the innumerable rills of thought and feeling to the ocean of an infinite mind, and thus surpasses the most elegant and ethereal polytheism infinitely more than the sun does the "cinders of the element." However beautiful the mythology of Greece, as interpreted by Wordsworth-however instinct it was with imagination--however it seemed to breathe a supernatural soul into the creation, and to rouse and startle it all into life-to fill the throne of the sun with a divine tenant -to hide a Naïad in every fountain-to crown every rock with its Oread-to deify shadows and storms-and to send sweeping across "old ocean's gray and melancholy waste" a celestial emperor-it must yield, without a struggle, to the thought of a great one Spirit, feeding by his perpetual presence the lamp of the universe; speaking in all its voices; listening in all its silence; storming in its rage; reposing in its calm; its light the shadow of his greatness; its gloom the hiding-place of his power; its verdure the trace of his steps; its fire the breath of his nostrils; its motion the circulation of his untiring energies; its warmth the effluence of his love; its mountains the altars of his worship; and its oceans the "mirrors" where his form "glasses itself in tempests." Compared to this idea, how does the fine dream of the Pagan Mythos tremble and melt away -Olympus, with its multitude of stately celestial natures, dwindle before the solitary, immutable throne of Jehovah-the poetry, as well as the philosophy of Greece, shrink before the single sentence, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord "-and Wordsworth's description of the origin of its multitudinous gods look tame beside the mighty lines of Milton: "The oracles are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Shall we rob ourselves of the varied beauties of the " Excursion," because one of the dramatis persone is a pedler, and because the book was originally a quarto of the largest size? No. Wordsworth is like his own cloud, ponderous, and moveth altogether, if he move at all. His excursions are not those of an ephemeron, and disdain duodecimos. We dare not put this chefd'œuvre of his genius on the same shelf with the "Paradise Lost;" but there are passages in both which claim kindred, and the minds of the twain dwell not very far apart. Having no wish to sacrifice one great man to the manes of another-to pull down the living that we may set up the cold idol of the dead-we may venture to affirm, that if Milton was more than the Wordsworth of the seventeenth, Wordsworth is the Milton of the nineteenth century. Among his later and smaller poems, the best, perhaps, is his "Ode on the Power of Sound." It is a little labored and involved, but the labor is that of a giant birth, and the involution is that of a close-piled magnificence. Up the gamut of sound how does he travel, from the sprinkling of earth on the coffin-lid to the note of the eagle, who rises over the arch of the rainbow, singing his own wild song; from the Ave Maria of the pilgrim to the voice of the lion, coming up vast and hollow on the winds of the midnight wilderness; from the trill of the blackbird to the thunder speaking from his black orchestra to the echoing heavens; from the "Distress gun on a leeward shore, Repeated, heard, and heard no more," to the murmur of the main, for well "The towering headlands crowned with mist, Their feet among the billows, know That ocean is a mighty harmonist;" Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. from the faintest sigh that stirs the stagnant Apollo from his shrine, Can no more divine With hollow shriek the sleep of Delphos leaving. cell. He feels from Judah's land The dreadful Infant's hand. The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne. air of the dungeon, to the "word which cannot pass away," and on which the earth and the heavens are suspended. This were, lyric fit to be placed beside Shelley's "Ode but for its appearance of having effort, a to Liberty," and Coleridge's "France." Appropriately, it has a swell of sound, and a pomp of numbers, such as he has exhibited in no other of his poems. And yet there are moods in which we would prefer his "We are Seven," or one of his little poems on Lucy, to all its labored vehemence and crudded splendor. We have never seen the "old man eloquent," but can well picture him to our fancy. Yonder he stands, under the shadow of the fine wood near his cottage, reading a portion of the "Recluse" to the echoes! "Ah, Bard, tremendous in sublimity, He has a forehead broad and high, and bent under the weight of brooding thought; a few gray hairs streaming over it; an eye which, when still, seems to "see more in nature than the eyes of other men," and when roused beams forth with preternatural meaning; a face furrowed with thought; a form bent with study; a healthy glow upon his cheek, which tells of moorland walks and mountain solitude; a deep-toned voice; he excels in reading his own poetry; is temperate in his habits; serene in his disposition; has been fortunate in his circumstances and family connexions; has lived, and is likely to die, one of the happiest of men. His religion is cheerful, sanguine, habitual; and we need not say how much it has done to color his poetry and to regulate his life. It is much to have one's fame connected vitally with the imperishable objects of nature. It is so with Burns, who has written his name upon Coila's plains, and rivers, and woods, in characters which shall never die. It is so with Scott, who has for monument the "mountains of his native land," and the rustling of the heather of Caledonia, as a perpetual pibroch of lament over his ashes. So we believe that the memory of the great man whose character we have been depicting, is linked indissolubly with the scenery of the Lakes, and that men in far future ages, when awed in spirit by the gloom of Helvellyn-when enchanted by the paradisal prospects of the vale of Keswick-when catching the first gleam of the waters of Windermere or when taking the last look of Skiddaw, the giant of the region-shall mingle with every blessing they utter, and every prayer they breathe, the name of William Wordsworth. THE LOVING STARS! BEAUTIFUL are ye, stars of night, Shining above on your thrones of light, Over a world of sorrow! Heralds of peace and love to those, Wearied and sad with their weight of woes, Ushering them at the midnight's close, No marvel that men in times of old, Many a destiny should unfold, Writ in your gentle beaming! The thoughtful spirit can wing its way, Leaving the world and its changeful day, The hearth may lack its accustomed guest, NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. Vienna in 1848. By the Hon. HENRY J. COKE. With Illustrations by WELD TAYLOR. Mr. Coke arrived in Vienna on the 9th of October in last year; two days after the formidable movement in that capital took place. He remained there during the crisis; and here we have the simple record of what he saw and suffered. The author is unpretending in manner and in matter. He says nothing of the causes that led to the revolt, and once crowned it with a temporary success; nothing of the progress of the insurrection-who commanded and who obeyed; what ideas were in the ascendant-what the people said and thought, hoped and feared, during the struggle. If he knew nothing of these matters, why write a book on the subject; and publish it under a title which suggests so much more than its pages contain? There is still a good deal of mystery about that October outbreak; and the event itself was one of those curious episodes in history which will possess a powerful interest for the future student of our ages. But Mr. Coke's is not the book which the reading public will require. He gives no general view-no connected account of the whole affair. He tells only what he saw; and, unfortunately for his reader, Mr. Coke saw very little-and that little hardly worth a record. The book has consequently neither head nor tail; it is neither right nor wrong. It is not so much affair Mr. Astor was the hero of the drama; in Mr. Ross's narrative the man of millions appears in anything but an amiable light. All the disasters of the expedition are attributed to his parsimony, petulance, and ignorance. Mr. Ross was himself too deeply interested in the success of the scheme to admit of his being a fair judge of his superior's motives; but such strong facts as are here put forth, speak in a language which needs no comment to heighten their damnatory effects. It is not our province to dwell upon the demerits of Mr. Astor and his mode of commercial colonization. The shores of the Columbia, on which he failed to establish a permanent settlement, are now, under better auspices, resounding with the axe and the hammer of a new set of adventurers; a State will by and by grow up in those magnificent regions; Astor's expedition will then become a part of a nation's history; and this work of Mr. Ross will become an historical document. But in the mean time its chief interest for us lies in the fact of its being one of the most striking pictures of a life of adventure which we have read for a long time. The book is as full of instruction, however, as of amusement; and the latter ingredient is so ample that we fancy few will lay it down who have once taken it up till the closing is reached.— Athenæum. FELLOW. about Vienna as about Mr. Coke. The author is Kavanagh; a Tule. By HENRY WADSWORTH LONGhis own hero, always occupying the centre of the picture-even in the illustrations. All the events seem to move round him quite naturally. Such obscure persons as General Bem, the student Herr Haug, Robert Blum, &c., are never mentioned by the chronicler; Mr. Coke alone occupies the stage.— Literary Gazette. Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River; being a Narrative of the Expedition fitted out by John Jacob Astor to establish the "Pacific Fur Company;" with an Account of some Indian Tribes on the Coast of the Pacific. By ALEXANDER Ross, one of the Adventurers. The words Astor and Astoria are familiar to most English readers. Few will require to be told that Astor is the name of a princely merchant of New York-a German by birth, but a citizen of the United States by adoption-and that Astoria was the name of a colony which he founded at the mouth of the Columbia River about thirty years ago. The genius of Washington Irving has rendered the story of this unfortunate settlement familiar to the public-but the romancer has dealt with it according to the usual license of his craft; here, for the first time we have a complete account of the matter in sober prose. And what an extraordinary story it is! In Washington Irving's version of the Professor Longfellow, the American poet, has attempted, in this little hook, imported by Mr. Wiley, to render a prose story the vehicle of poetical truths. These are to be found, more or less, in every page of "Kavanagh;" but the author has been not quite successful in the medium chosen for their development. The story, which is in itself slight, is generally suspended to make way for the speculations which it should have embodied. The persons are abstract and shadowy; and in the endeavor to make his portraits real, Mr. Longfellow has been over-literal in his transcript. Characterization is only to be gained by the predominance of one or two striking features; while here the distinctness of the actual is impaired by too great minuteness in its reproduction. Indeed the province of Art is not to reproduce a reality, but to depict the mental impression which it leaves. He, for instance, who would catch the general effect of a building must not stand so near it as to perceive the crevices in the mortar. That which is specific in any object must be secured by subordinating to it those qualities which are common to other objects of the same class. From a disregard of this principle, individuality of portraiture has been lost in the work before us; and what is occasionally natural and felicitous often degenerates into the trivial. fair, however, to add that the early pages of the story are those which this error chiefly affects. It is |