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from allusions throughout his poems. A few facts, taken from them, can be stated here without presumption or the risk of inaccuracy.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born on the 7th of April, 1770, at Cockermouth, a small town of Cumberland in the north of England. The early part of his life was spent in that romantic and mountainous region which was to be the happy home of his manhood and old age. His scholastic education was completed at St. John's College, in the University of Cambridge, after which he spent some time upon the Continent, and was in France at the outbreak of the French Revolution. The earliest date affixed to any of Wordsworth's pieces is the year 1786-more than half a century ago, and now, when he has passed the solemn limit of three score years and ten, his imagination is active with unabated vigour. His has been a life devoted to the cultivation of the poet's art, for its best and most lasting uses a self-dedication as complete as any the world has ever witnessed. The habit of life of the Poet of Rydal Mount' has been that of meditative seclusion-sympathy and communion always, however, dutifully pre

served with the hearts of his fellow-beings. His has never been

- -the heart that lives alone,

Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind! but one of the admirable moral aims of many of his poems has been to "excite profitable sympathies in kind and good hearts, and in some degree to 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 plainly differ from us."

The life of Wordsworth has been distinguished for the symmetry and the harmonious succession of its various periods. His days 'bound each to each by natural piety' have been sedulously guarded from all influences alien to his genius:

He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.

He is retired as noontide dew,
Or fountain in a 'noon-day grove ;'
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.

The outward shows of sky and earth,

Of hill and valley, he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth

Have come to him in solitude.

Wordsworth has outlived many of his contemporaries among the poets-as will be seen from some lines in the latter part of this selection, in which he touches upon the fact with much solemnity of sorrow and reflection. One of his most thoughtful and earnest admirers has spoken no more than the truth, when saying"Many will join in my prayer, that health and strength of body and mind may be granted to him, to complete the noble works which he has still in store, so that men may learn more worthily to understand and appreciate what a glorious gift God bestows on a nation, when he gives them a poet."*

HENRY REED.

Philadelphia, December 1, 1841.

*JULIUS CHARLES HARE: see dedication of

'GUESSES AT TRUTH, by Two Brothers.'

I have seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for murmurings from
within

Were heard, sonorous cadences! whereby,
To his belief, the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
Even such a shell the Universe itself
Is to the ear of Faith.

'THE EXCURSION:' Book Fou.th.

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