Foes might hang upon their path, snakes rustle near,
But nothing from their inward selves had they to fear.

'Thought infirm ne'er came between them,

Whether printing desert sands

With accordant steps, or gathering

Forest fruit with social hands;

Or whispering like two reeds that in the cold moonbeam
Bend with the breeze their heads beside a crystal stream."

The Evening Voluntaries are very beautiful in manner, and full of suggestions. The second is worth extracting as a forcible exhibition of one of Wordsworth's leading opinions.

"Not in the lucid intervals of life

That come but as a curse to party strife;
Not in some hour when pleasure with a sigh
Of languor, puts his rosy garland by;
Not in the breathing times of that poor slave

Who daily piles up wealth in Mammon's cave,

Is nature felt, or can be; nor do words

Which practised talent readily affords

Prove that her hands have touched responsive chords.

Nor has her gentle beauty power to move

With genuine rapture and with fervent love

The soul of genius, if he dares to take

Life's rule from passion craved for passion's sake;

Untaught that meekness is the cherished bent

Of all the truly great and all the innocent;
But who is innocent? By grace divine,
Not otherwise, O Nature! we are thine,
Through good and evil thine, or just degree
Of rational and manly sympathy,

To all that earth from pensive hearts is stealing,
And heaven is now to gladdened eyes revealing,
Add every charm the universe can show
Through every change its aspects undergo,
Care may be respited, but not repealed;
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 distempered intellect refuse

His gracious help, or give what we abuse."

But nothing in this volume better deserves attention than “Lines suggested by a Portrait from the pencil of F. Stone," and "Stanzas on the Power of Sound." The first for a refinement and justness of thought rarely surpassed, and the second for a lyric flow, a swelling inspiration, and a width of range, which Wordsworth has never equalled, except in the "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," and the noble ode, or rather hymn, to Duty. It should be read entire, and I shall not quote a line. By a singular naiveté the poet has prefixed to these stanzas a table of contents. This distrust of his reader seems to prove that he had risen above his usual level.

What more to the purpose can we say about Wordsworth, except-read him. Like his beloved Nature, to be known he must be loved. His thoughts may be transfused, but never adequately interpreted. Verily,

"To paint his being to a grovelling mind,

Were like describing pictures to the blind.

But no one, in whose bosom there yet lives a spark of nature or feeling, need despair of some time sympathizing with him; since one of the most brilliantly factitious writers of the day, one I should have singled out as seven-fold shielded against his gentle influence, has paid him so feeling a tribute:

"How must thy lone and lofty soul have gone
Exulting on its way, beyond the loud
Self-taunting mockery of the scoffers grown
Tethered and dulled to Nature, in the crowd!
Earth has no nobler, no more moral sight
Than a Great Poet, whom the world disowns,

But stills not, neither angers; from his height
As from a star, float forth his sphere-like tones;
He wits not whether the vexed herd may hear

The music wafted to the reverent ear;

And far man's wrath, or scorn, or heed above,

Smiles down the calm disdain of his majestic love!"

[From Stanzas addressed by Bulwer to Wordsworth.]

Read him, then, in your leisure hours, and when you walk into the summer fields you shall find the sky more blue, the flowers more fair, the birds more musical, your minds more awake, and your hearts more tender, for having held communion with him.

I have not troubled myself to point out the occasional affectations of Southey, the frequent obscurity of Coleridge, or the dif fuseness of Wordsworth. I should fear to be treated like the critic mentioned in the story Addison quotes from Boccalini, whom Apollo rewarded for his labours by presenting him with a bushel of chaff from which all the wheat had been winnowed. For myself I think that where there is such beauty and strength, we can afford to be silent about slight defects; and that we refine our tastes more effectually by venerating the grand and lovely, than by detecting the little and mean.

THE MODERN DRAMA.*

A TRAGEDY in five acts!—what student of poetry,—(for, admire, O Posterity, the strange fact, these days of book-craft produce not only inspired singers, and enchanted listeners, but students of poetry,)-what student in this strange sort, I say, has not felt his eye rivetted to this title, as it were written in letters of fire? has not heard it whispered in his secret breast ?—In this form alone canst thou express thy thought in the liveliness of life, this success alone should satisfy thy ambition!

Were all these ardours caught from a genuine fire, such as, in favouring eras, led the master geniuses by their successive efforts to perfect this form, till it afforded the greatest advantages in the smallest space, we should be glad to warm and cheer us at a very small blaze. But it is not so. The drama, at least the English drama of our day, shows a reflected light, not a spreading fire. It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.

This is not an observation to which there are no exceptions, some we shall proceed to specify, but those who have, with any care, watched this ambition in their own minds, or analyzed its

* The Patrician's Daughter, a tragedy, in five acts, by J. Westland Marston : London: C. Mitchel, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street, 1841.

Athelwold, a tragedy in five acts, by W Smith, Esq.; William Blackwood and Sons. London and Edinburgh, 1842.

Strafford, a tragedy, by John Sterling. London; Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1843.

results in the works of others, cannot but feel that the drama is not a growth native to this age, and that the numerous grafts produce little fruit, worthy the toil they cost.

"Tis indeed, hard to believe that the drama, once invented, should cease to be a habitual and healthy expression of the mind. It satisfies so fully the wants both of sense and soul, supplying both deep and light excitements, simple, comprehensive, and various, adapted either to great national and religious subjects, or to the private woes of any human breast. The space and the time occupied, the vehicle of expression, fit it equally for the entertainment of an evening, or the closet theme of meditative years. Edipus, Macbeth, Wallenstein, chain us for the hour, lead us through the age.

Who would not covet this mirror, which, like that of the old wizards, not only reflects, but reproduces the whole range of forms, this key, which unlocks the realms of speculation at the hour when the lights are boldest and the shadows most suggestive, this goblet, whose single sparkling draught is locked from common air by walls of glittering ice? An artful wild, where nature finds no bound to her fertility, while art steadily draws to a whole its linked chain.

Were it in man's power by choosing the best, to attain the best in any particular kind, we would not blame the young poet, if he always chose the drama.

But by the same law of faery which ordains that wishes shall be granted unavailingly to the wisher, no form of art will succeed with him to whom it is the object of deliberate choice. It must grow from his nature in a certain position, as it first did from the general mind in a certain position, and be no garment taken from the shining store to be worn at a banquet, but a real body gradually woven and assimilated from the earth and sky which environed the poet in his youthful years. He may