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O, had I but the envied power to choose
My home, no sound of city bell should reach
My ear; not even the cannon's thundering roar.
Far in a vale, be there my low abode,

Embowered in woods where many a songster chants."

Genuine good taste, as well as moral sensibility, has often led the poet feelingly to denounce that frozen spirit of aristocracy which sweeps away the dwellings of the poor-even whole hamletsshuts up old paths, and destroys ancient rural memorials, only to extend the bounds of monotony, and of "dreary selfish pride:"

"Curse on the heartless taste that, proud, exclaims,
Erase the hamlet, sweep the cottage off;
Remove each stone, and only leave behind
The trees that once embowered the wretched huts.
What though the inmates old, who hoped to end
Their days below these trees, must seek a home,
Far from their native fields, far from the graves
In which their fathers lie,-to city lanes,
Darksome and close, exiled? It must be so;
The wide-extending lawn would else be marred
By objects so incongruous.' Barbarous taste!
Stupidity intense! Yon straw-roofed cot,
Seen through the elms, it is a lovely sight!
That scattered hamlet, with its burn-side green,
On which the thrifty housewife spreads her yarn,
Or half-bleached web, while children busy play,
And paddle in the stream,-for every heart,
Untainted by pedantic rules, hath charms.
I love the neighbourhood of man and beast."

If this be not fine poetry, it is something better. After lamenting the misery, and describing the horrors of war, Grahame reverts to this heart-felt theme in a beautiful passage:

"But let me fly such scenes, which, even when feigned,

Distress. To Scotia's peaceful glens I turn,

And rest my eyes upon her waving fields,

Where now the scythe lays low the mingled flowers. Ah, spare, thou pitying swain! a ridge-breadth round

The partridge nest: so shall no new-come lord—
To ope a vista to some distant spire-

Thy cottage raze; but, when the toilsome day
Is done, still shall the turf-laid seat invite

Thy weary limbs; there peace and health shall bless
Thy frugal fare, served by the unhired hand,
That seeks no wages save a parent's smile.

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To me more sweet

The greenwood path, half hid 'neath brake and brier, Than pebbled walks so trim; more dear to me The daisied plat, before the cottage door, Than waveless sea of widely-spreading lawn, 'Mid which some insulated mansion towers, Spurning the humble dwellings from its proud domain.'

The same kindness of heart is everywhere visible, the same brotherly fellowship with the great family of man. Of the evils attending land monopoly, and the monstrous extension of the manufactories, Grahame has taken the same views as Goldsmith, and from honest conviction. His opinions are not consonant with the speculations of politicians; but, amid the periodical convulsions which agitate the commercial world, and the mass of human suffering which attends them, the painting of his verse assumes the solidity of wisdom. His pictures of the wretched children imprisoned in overgrown manufactories, and his rural groups of children brought

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from their native fields to languish in squalor and disease, cooped up in the garrets of the city, contrasted with their blithe pastimes and attendance at their hamlet schools, are as touching as the Village Exiles of Goldsmith:

"The low roof

Where tiny elves are taught :-a pleasant spot
It is, well fenced from winter blast, and screened,
By high o'erspreading boughs, from summer sun.
Before the door a sloping green extends

No farther than the neighbouring cottage-hedge,
Beneath whose bourtree shade a little well
Is scooped, so limpid, that its guardian trout
(The wonder of the lesser stooping wights)
Is at the bottom seen.-At noontide hour,
The imprisoned throng, enlarged, blithesome rush
forth

To sport the happy interval away;

While those from distance come, upon the sward,
At random seated, loose their little stores :

In midst of them poor Redbreast hops unharmed,
For they have read, or heard, and wept to hear,
The story of the Children in the Wood;
And many a crumb to Robin they will throw."

،، Behold the band With some small remnant of their household gear, Drawn by the horse which once they called their own; Behold them take a last look of that roof,

From whence no smoke ascends, and onward move In silence; whilst each passing object wakes Remembrances of scenes that never more

Will glad their hearts ; the mill, the smiddy blaze
So cheerful, and the doubling hammer's clink,
Now dying on the ear, now on the breeze

Heard once again. Ah, why that joyous bark
Precursive ! Little dost thou ween, poor thing !
That ne'er again the slowly-stepping herd,

And nibbling flock, thou'lt drive afield or home;
That ne'er again thou'lt chase the limping hare,

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While, knowing well thy eager yelp, she scorns
Thy utmost speed, and, from the thistly lea,
Espies, secure, thy puzzled, fruitless search."
But soon thou wilt forget
The cheerful fields; not so the infant train,
Thy playmates gay.

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"Oft from their high

And wretched roof, they look, trying, through clouds
Of driving smoke, a glimpse of the green fields
To gain, while, at the view, they feel their hearts
Sinking within them. Ah! these vain regrets
For happiness, that now is but a dream,
Are not their sorest evil. No; disease
(The harvest of the crowded house of toil)
Approaches, withering first the opening bloom
Of infant years.'

"O! that heart-wringing cry,
To take them home,-to take them home again,-
Their ceaseless deathbed cry, poor innocents!
Repeated while the power to lisp is theirs ;-
Alas! that home no more shall ye behold;
No more along the thistly lea pursue

The flying down; no more, transported, rush From learning's humble door, with playmates blithe,

To gather pebbles in the shallow burn."

These passages are not selected as specimens of Grahame's poetry, but as traits of his turn of mind.

While thus occupied in "delineating the manners and characters of birds, and the scenery which they frequent," grafting upon these sketches, as we have seen, his own affections and thoughts, two seasons more passed, and law never again reclaimed her tardy and reluctant disciple. It is not to be regretted that Grahame abandoned the bar, but that he spent so many precious years in a profession to which nothing could ever have reconciled his mind.

The melancholy regrets which poets and men of letters have often expressed, on finding, when too late, that they have lost the game of life in attending to the bye-play of fancy, may be just as they respect the individual; but in the most illustrious instances, they are ungenerous as they affect the species. Is the world a loser, because the young vagrant Shakspeare did not become a staid respectable wool-stapler at Stratford on Avon, or because Samuel Johnson did not get a fat college living, which would have spared him the hard necessity of writing a single line? The severity of time and chance which brings forward the lights of mind, is never to be lamented, even though in its passing it be evil to the individual. Cowper, who was in many respects the congenial spirit of Grahame, in writing to an enthusiastic young admirer, whom his poetry, by the way, had gained for him, says, "Had I employed my time as wisely as you, in a situation very similar to yours, I had never been a poet, perhaps, but I might by this time have acquired a character of more importance in society, and a situation in which my friends would have been better pleased to see me." This was prudent counsel to give to Mr Rose; but it is false reasoning, and unfounded in fact. Who shall say, that the recluse Cowper was, on the whole, a less happy man in his obscure retirement, even as regards the present life, than if he had struggled into notice as a practitioner in the Court of King's Bench or Chancery? We know not what contemporary character the

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