in a succession of rich and sonorous verses, connected by exquisitely natural transitions, which it would not be easy to equal from any other poet of the day. In the juvenile poems of Coleridge, there are a few pieces that resemble them; but Coleridge was too fond of harsh inversions, and out-of-the-way expressions, to make those pieces universally pleasing. These, on the contrary, are touched with the finest taste and the mellowest imagination; they resemble in effect, the blended colors with which the western sky is tinted after a summer sunset. The opening of the first is strikingly beautiful.

"Calm is the fragrant air, and loth to lose

Day's grateful warmth, though moist with falling dews;
Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none;

Look up a second time, and one by one

You mark them twinkling out with silvery light

And wonder how they could elude the sight," &c.

In the following passage, the description in the first part, with the moral application at the conclusion, is one of the poet's happiest "strokes of art.”

the mere

"Soft as a cloud is yon blue ridge,
Seems firm as solid crystal, breathless, clear,
And motionless: and, to the gazer's eye,
Deeper than ocean, in the immensity
Of its vague mountains and unreal sky!
But, from the process in that still retreat,
Turn to minuter changes at our feet;
Observe how dewy twilight has withdrawn
The crowd of daisies from the shaven lawn,
And has restored to view its tender green,

That, while the sun rode high, was lost beneath their
dazzling sheen.

- An emblem this of what the sober hour

Can do for minds disposed to feel its power !
Thus oft, when we in vain have wished away
The petty pleasures of the garish day,
Meek eve shuts up the whole usurping host
(Unbashful dwarfs each glittering at his post),
And leaves the disencumbered spirit free

To reassume a staid simplicity.

-

"T is well, but what are helps of time and place,
When wisdom stands in need of nature's grace ;
Why do good thoughts, invoked or not, descend,
Like angels from their bowers, our virtues to befriend,

If yet to-morrow, unbelied, may say, 'I come to open out, for fresh display, The elastic vanities of yesterday?'

pp. 119, 120. In the seventh of this series ("By the Sea-Side"), there are passages of remarkable beauty. The description is worked up with minuteness and delicacy, and fills the mind with a sense of the finest harmony. The following lines, towards the end of the poem, are equal in the correspondence of sound to sense, and in general expressive power, to the best descriptive passages of the ancients. We should be glad to quote the piece entire, but must be content with a few lines.

"Yet oh! how gladly would the air be stirred

By some acknowledgment of thanks and praise,
Soft in its temper as those vesper lays
Sung to the Virgin while accordant oars
Urge the slow bark along Calabrian shores;
A sea-born service, through the mountains felt,
Till into one loved vision all things melt."

But the same praise cannot be extended to all the this series, the following for instance.

"The sun has long been set,

The stars are out by twos and threes,
The little birds are piping yet
Among the bushes and trees;

There's a cuckoo, and one or two thrushes,
And a far-off wind that rushes,

And a sound of water that gushes

And the cuckoo's sovereign cry

Fills all the hollow of the sky.
Who would 'go parading'
In London, and masquerading,'
On such a night of June

With that beautiful soft half-moon,
And all these innocent blisses,

On such a night as this is?

poems of

"The Laborer's Noon-day Hymn" is composed in a fine strain of pious thankfulness. The "Wren's Nest" is pleasing and simple, but has no striking merit. The next series is a succession of Sonnets, composed or suggested during a tour in Scotland, in 1833. They do not differ, in their general character, from those we have already spoken of. They contain many fine descriptive passages, interwoven with delicate moral

reflections, but are not of a kind to excite a strong interest, except so far as they may be viewed in the light of personal notices of their author.

This volume shows, that Mr. Wordsworth is not only a true lover of Nature, but a thorough student of Nature's language. It must be confessed, however, that there is too much seeking after poetical effect, and that this banishes the idea of immediate, uncontrollable inspiration, which the great poets of the world have so strongly impressed on the minds of men, as to affect the common forms of speech. Perhaps the old inspiration is gone. In ancient times, the poet looked freely and joyously on the world around him, and poured out his song as naturally as the birds of the grove. But, in the high civilization of this age, the poet's childhood and youth are cooped up within the walls of the school-house and college; and he is forced to con and construe other men's thoughts at second hand from Nature. He becomes a reasoner and a critic. His head is filled with wise saws and modern instances. He can

make nonsense verses in English, and perhaps in Latin, to perfection. He can apply the nicest rules of rhetoric to composition, and scan with precision the most complicated metres. But there is great danger lest his love of Nature be supplanted by the strong interest of passion and romance. He becomes a cultivated man; but the freshness and enthusiasm of the child of Nature are gone. Reasoning and eloquence delight him; but the breath of heaven, the bright flowers and the green fields, less readily find an avenue to touch his heart. In literature, propriety of speech is more likely to move him than truth of sentiment. A false application of a word or phrase will disturb him more than a false description or a tame thought. But Mr. Wordsworth has striven to undo all the ties that artificial life has bound around him. He has attempted to go back to the simplicity of primitive man. He tries to look on nature as if she had never been looked on before, and to express the elemental feelings of the heart, as if they had never been expressed before. All his errors and weaknesses grow out of the excess to which he carries this principle; and the volume before us is not free from these unfortunate peculiarities. But if it shows too much egotism in the allusions to his character as a poet, and to his "Rydalian laurels," it must, be confessed the vanity is almost justified by the worship of an increasing school of devoted desciples, and the growing disposition

of the world at large to do him homage. We cannot, however, entirely rid ourselves of an unpleasant impression, that he is often poetical because he feels it his duty to be poetical,- that he sets out, with malice prepense, to be poetically affected by the contemplation of a scene in nature, and that he is deliberately inspired with it, because he has a sort of professional character to support. Now this perpetual consciousness of being a poet, and having certain poetical duties to perform at all times, cannot be very graciously regarded by readers beyond the circle of the initiated. But, with all these deductions, the poems of Mr. Wordsworth will always be ranked among the most remarkable monuments of reflective genius, that our age has produced.

C. C. F.

ART. VIII.-A Sermon preached in King's Chapel, November, 22, 1835, the Sunday after the Funeral of the REV. JAMES FREEMAN, D. D. By F. W. P. GREENWOOD, surviving Minister of King's Chapel. Boston: Russell, Shattuck, & Williams. 1835. 8vo. pp. 26.

THE death of Dr. Freeman, in a venerable old age, has already called forth the tributes, which his good name, his distinguished moral worth, and the services of a faithful ministry seemed to demand. Nor were these the expressions only of the personal attachment which his character could not fail to conciliate, but they were due to the place which he occupied in the public regards. As, however, it is full ten years since his voice has been heard in our pulpits, or his benignant countenance been seen in any of our assemblies, it is probable that not a few among the younger portions of our readers, who perhaps have heard of him chiefly as a retired minister, may be surprised at the encomiums, which even the most cautious and discriminating friendship may be eager to bestow. For, so brief is the active life of man, even of him to whom is permitted the longest term; so rapidly do the fathers pass away, and the children rise into their places; so much, also, does public fame, that most fleeting of earthly things, — depend on being actually within the view of men, that a retirement of but a short duration shall be enough to withdraw an individual

from notice, and to make the younger generation strangers, except perchance by his name, to the man whom their fathers rejoiced to honor.

Nor can we but regard it as among the trials incident to old age, from which the most virtuous and honored are not exempted, that in surviving their early contemporaries, they must bequeath their fame to the keeping of a generation, who have not known them, or have known them chiefly in the evening of their days, and with their growing infirmities. The sweet promise of their youth, fulfilled in their vigorous manhood; the memory of their active and honorable career; of the wisdom and eloquence with which they instructed and did persuade; of the generous and enlightened charity, by which they adorned their faith; and even of those more signal services, which gave them glory in the sight of their coevals, are, if not forgotten, yet inadequately estimated by another generation. They are gone, who could tell, because they had witnessed, and themselves contributed, to their meridian fame; and who could be indulgent to the infirmities that are, because they remember what has been.

These remarks, illustrating the transitoriness of human fame, and the tendency of the present to obliterate, at least, to obscure the past, are only in a limited extent applicable to the subject of this notice; whose felicity it was, to have been gathering around him all his days a "troop" of younger friends, who, as they were the chosen solace of his old age, are, now that he is gone, the guardians of his fame. The number is not small of those among us, who, either from the endearments of kindred, respect for an affectionate Pastor, or gratitude to one, who, without any obligation from such relations, was still their paternal counsellor and friend,-love to recall, as among the encouragements of their youth, the gentleness of his manners, the unaffected kindness of his temper, the little gifts or tokens of his regard, all made precious by his unquestioned goodness and irreproachable life. The practical wisdom, moreover, which distinguished Dr. Freeman, and made him act upon what men in general only see, taught him that it was well to unite himself betimes with the young as well as with the old. He was mindful of the ravages, that time must inevitably make upon even the widest circles of society. He early suffered them in his own; and, as the friends of his youth, or the earlier companions of his ministry fell around him, the