alas!)-the essay by De Quincey, On Wordsworth's Poetry, published some twelve years ago. The essayist is particularly happy in showing how Wordsworth has brought many a truth into life both for the eye and for the understanding, which previously had slumbered indistinctly for all menawakening into illuminated consciousness old lineaments of truth long slumbering in the mind, although too faint to have extorted attention. For instance, suggests the critic, as respects the eye, who does not acknowledge instantaneously the strength of reality in that saying upon a cataract seen from a station two miles off, that it was "frozen by distance ?" In all nature, there is not an object so essentially at war with the stiffening of frost, or the headlong and desperate life of a cataract; and yet notoriously the effect of distance is to lock up this frenzy of motion into the most petrific column of stillness. The effect is perceived at once when pointed out; but how few are the eyes that ever would have perceived it for themselves! Twilight, again,—who before Wordsworth ever distinctly noticed its abstracting power?—that power of removing, softening, harmonising, by which a mode of obscurity executes for the eye the same mysterious office which the mind so often within its own shadowy realms executes for itself.* The essayist notices as another great field amongst the pomps of nature, which, if Wordsworth did not first notice, he certainly has noticed most circumstantially, -cloud-scenery, or those pageants of sky-built architecture, which sometimes in summer, at noonday, and in all seasons about sunset, arrest or appal the meditative; "perplexing monarchs" with the spectacle of armies manoeuvring, or deepening the solemnity of evening by towering edifices that mimic, but which also in mimicking mock, the transitory grandeurs of man. We commend those who see nothing, unless perhaps something to ridicule, in that pastoral bit, The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising; There are forty feeding like one * "In the dim interspace between day and night, all disappears from our earthly scenery, as if touched by an enchanter's rod, which is either mean or inharmonious, or unquiet, or expressive of temporary things. Leaning against a column of rock, looking down upon a lake or river, and at intervals carrying your eyes forward through a vista of mountains, you become aware that your sight rests upon the very same spectacle, unaltered in a single feature, which once at the same hour was beheld by the legionary Roman from his embattled camp, or by the roving Briton in his 'wolfskin vest,' lying down to sleep, and looking " through some leafy bower, Before his eyes were closed.' How magnificent is the summary or abstraction of the elementary features in such a scene, as executed by the poet himself, in illustration of this abstraction daily executed by nature, through her handmaid Twilight! Listen, reader, to the closing strain, solemn as twilight is solemn, and grand as the spectacle which it describes: † Ibid. 'By him [i. e. the roving Briton] was seen The self-same vision which we now behold, At thy meek bidding, shadowy Power, brought forth, The floods, the stars,-a spectacle as old As the beginnings of the heavens and earth.'" (See De Quincey's essay On Wordsworth's Poetry, Tait, 1845.) to see what significance can be elicited from the picture by an expositor imbued with the painter's own spirit, by consulting De Quincey's acute analysis of the "hieroglyphic" of the passage. A volume, he justly says, might be filled (would that he had the filling of it! none so competent) with such glimpses of novelty as Wordsworth has first laid bare, even to the apprehension of the senses; while, for the understanding, when moving in the same track of human sensibilities, he has only done not so much. "But the great distinction of Wordsworth, and the pledge of his increasing popularity, is the extent of his sympathy with what is really permanent in human feelings, and also the depth of his sympathy." On man, on nature, and on human life, Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mixed; -To these emotions, whencesoe'er they come, Towards Wordsworth, as our great Moral Poet, it well becomes us to use, as Wilson taught and practised, not the language merely of admiration, but of reverence of love and gratitude due to a benefactor of humanity, who has purified its passions by loftiest thoughts and noblest sentiments, stilling their turbulence by the same processes that magnify their power, and showing how the soul, in ebb and flow, and when its tide is at full, may be at once as strong and as serene as the sea.† And we shall close these notes on a note-worthiest man by citing lines to his praise, in this his character of great Moral Poet, from the poems of three note-worthy disciples. Richard Chenevix Trench, the present Dean of Westminster, hails in Wordsworth A counsellor well fitted to advise In daily life, and at whose lips no less Who, though his head be hidden in the skies, Plants his firm foot upon our common earth, Dealing with thoughts which everywhere have birth,— This is the poet, true of heart and wise: No dweller in a baseless world of dream, Which is not earth nor heaven: his words have past Into man's common thought and week-day phrase; This is the poet, and his verse will last.‡ A second to bear witness shall be the husband of Dora Wordsworth, and loyal votary of her father's muse: *The Excursion. † See Professor Wilson's review of the "Yarrow Revisited," &c. (1835.) R. C. Trench's Poems: Sonnets. Him, the High Druid of the oak-clad fells Ev'n in their shyest depths, and best rebukes That are the pulses of ingenuous deeds.* And the third shall be the already honoured son of a long and widely and deeply honoured sire-giving expression to Memorial Verses on the occasion of Wordsworth's death (April, 1850): Ah, since dark days still bring to light Keep fresh the grass upon his grave, O Rotha! with thy living wave. * Quillinan's Poems. † Poems by Matthew Arnold. Second Series. The closing lines, on Wordsworth's grave, remind us of a touching Sonnet, simple and sweet, by another "Lakist," David Holt, written in Grasmere Churchyard-concerning which spot, it has been well asked, Could there be a meeter resting-place for the Apostle of Nature?-could all the dusty grandeur of Westminster compensate for the daisy that rises from his heart, or the golden celandines that cluster on the turf and shelter the lingering dewdrops from the sun? 66 Oh, better far than richly sculptured tomb, Oh, fitter far than monumental pile Of storied marble in cathedral aisle, Is this low grassy grave, bright with the bloom Of Nature, and laid open to the smile Of the blue heaven,-this stone that tells to whom The spot is dedicate, who rests beneath In this God's acre, this fair field of death. Oh, meet it is, great bard, that in the breast Of this sweet vale, and 'neath the guardian hills, By thee so loved, thy venerated dust Should lie in peace; and it is meet and just Should rise the murmur of a thousand rills." THE LAWYERS' SERVANTS. BY THE AUTHOR OF ASHLEY." I. IN a certain quiet street of London, chiefly if not entirely filled by lawyers and their offices, there flourished some years ago the eminent firm of Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett. An extensive practice had they; and some other firms in the street would watch with an envious eye the shoals of letters and deeds delivered there by the morning postman, wishing only a tenth would come to them. The partners bore the character of honourable men; and certainly, for lawyers, they were tolerably clean-fingered. The three floors in the house were consecrated to business. The ground-floor was chiefly appropriated to clerks; on the first floor were the private and consulting rooms of the partners, and on the next story were clerks again. This left free the kitchens, which were under ground, and the attics in the roof, in which apartments dwelt a man of the name of May, his wife, and daughter. May was the trusty porter or messenger of the firm, took care of the house on Sundays and at nights, and was much esteemed by his employers as an honest, respectable servant. Mrs. May cleaned the offices, made the fires, and scoured the stairs; and Miss May, a damsel rising ten, put her ringlets in paper, and read the trash disseminated by certain popular weekly publications. She was being brought up—well, we shall see how. One night in winter a clerk remained beyond the usual hour. He was just articled, had copied a deed carelessly and imperfectly, and s was ordered to remain over-hours and copy it again. A strict disciplinarian was Mr. Rowley, the overlooking clerk of Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett. The porter was out, and Mrs. and Miss May were in the kitchen, the former washing up the tea-things, the latter seated on a low chair, and devouring, by the blaze of the fire, the fresh number of " E. Caterpillar's Penny Weekly Repository of Romance;" E. Caterpillar being a popular writer with the million. "Anything new there, Sophiar ?" asked the mother. "Law, ma! yes: such a splendid tale! red Hand.' It begins beautiful." The Knight of the Blood "You'll try your eyes, reading by firelight, Sophiar. Come to the candle." "I wish you wouldn't make a fuss," was Miss Sophia's answer. "You'll not read long, I can tell you. As soon as ever I have finished these tea-things, I'm a going to clear the pianer, and you'll come and practise." The young lady gave a jerk with her shoulders, and a kick with her. feet, both of which movements might be taken as emblematic of rebellion. But Mrs. May was as good as her word, cleared the square piano, which appeared laden with miscellaneous articles of culinary utility, not generally found in association with pianos, opened it, and put one of the April-VOL. CIX. NO. CCCCXXXVI. 2 D wooden chairs before it. Miss Sophia, however, declined to disturb herself. "What was the good of your father a buying of the hinstrument, and what's the good of your having a genus for music, if you don't practise ?" demanded Mrs. May. "Come, miss, no shuffling. And you have not looked at your book-lessons yet." "Ma, how you do bother!" "Come this minute, I say, or I'll put you to bed; and give them stupid romances to me," added Mrs. May, whisking the leaves out of the child's hand. "You don't call them stupid when you read them yourself; and you don't like to be disturbed at them, though you disturb me," raved the child, in a voice between screaming and sobbing. "The other night, when father kept asking for his supper, you were in the thick of the Blighted Rose, and you wouldn't stir from it, and he had to get out the bread and cheese himself, and fetch the beer!" & "Never you mind that, miss. You come to the pianer as I bid you. It's not your place to reflect on me.” Sophia, finding resistance useless, flung some books on the chair, to make it higher, and flung herself atop of them, dashing into what she called "the scales" and her mother "the jingles." Mrs. May drew a chair before the fire, placed her feet on the iron fender, snuffed the candle on the table behind her, and opened the publication she had taken from her daughter. Before, however, she was fairly immersed in its beauties, or the jingles had come to an end, a tremendous noise overhead caused them both to start. "Sakes alive!" uttered Mrs. May, a favourite exclamation of hers, "what's that ?" A somewhat prolonged noise, as of a stool or chair being moved violently about, was now heard. "Mother! suppose it should be an apparition!" 66 Suppose it should be a robber, come in to kill us, or to steal the law papers! "was the more practical remark of Mrs. May. "I daren't go and see." "I'll go and see," answered Sophia. "I'm not afraid of robbers." She took the candle from the table, hurried fearlessly up-stairs, and knocked at the front office on the ground-floor. Mr. Jones, the young clerk, not being used to solitary evening employment, had nodded over his work, fallen down with the stool, and then picked himself and his stool irascibly up again, inflicting on the latter sundry bumps on the floor, by way of revenge. "Come in!" he called out, in answer to Sophia's knock; and very much astonished he looked when the knocker presented herself. A blue-eyed, pretty child, with flaxen hair that curled on her shoulders. Dressed well, she would have been an elegant child, but, dressed as she was, in all the colours of the rainbow, flaunty, dirty, and with a profusion of glass beads glittering about her as necklace and bracelets, she looked like a little itinerant actress at a country fair. 66 Why! who and what are you?" demanded the young gentleman. "If you please, we did not know anybody was left, and when the |