Os homini SUBLIME dedit; cœlumque videre

JUSSIT,et erectos AD SIDERA tollere vultus."

Your own poet tells us that "the primal duties shine aloft-like stars!" How should you ever get a knowledge of them with a pack on your shoulders? No, Murdoch, you plainly belong to the cetera animalia. Down then on your marrow bones, and perform in a suitable position your appropriate functions of a beast of burden! One advantage indeed, your profession in this respect may have brought with it, that the callosity of your dorsal muscles may have better prepared you for your present flagella

tion.

As to the pack itself, Mr. Words. worth has made the most of it when he

says,

Within their moving magazines is lodged Power that comes forth to quicken and exalt

Affections seated in the mother's breast And in the lover's fancy; and to feed The sober sympathies of long-tried friends."

But were we to come to details, how poor and mean would the contents appear. I decline to vulgarise Mr. North's pages with an enumeration of articles so essentially unpoetical, and which every reader's fancy can readily supply.

See now the contrast between your self and me. In attitude how different! Nature in my case has not only escaped degradation, but has received assistance and embellishment. Nothing is so good for the carriage as driving a gig. Then, in our paraphernalia,

what an immeasurable distance between the pack and the bag! The one all that is coarse and clumsy-the other all that is graceful and genteel; the one all body--the other all spirit; the one prose-the other poetry. that the pen of Wordsworth had been employed to describe the wonders of this magic repository, wich like Fortunatus's purse contains such boundless resources in so narrow a compass; always filling yet never full. But if Wordsworth declines the task, Tomkins himself must try it, and favour you with

L

In the same strain and with equal success, I might contrast your ironpointed staff with my gig whip-and your thick-soled and clouted shoon with my Sunday Wellingtons or travelling tops.

I think I have now made out a sufficient case against you and Mr Wordsworth, and demonstrated that in all points of view, my character and history are eminently suited for the hero of a great philosophical poem, and that yours are as eminently the reverse. But before closing my letter let me shortly advert to those points which Mr. Wordsworh, conscious of an impending attack, has put forward in his defence.

Mr. Wordsworth says that he has ever been ready" to pay homage to the aristocracy of nature," in which category he seems to include your case. I am not sure that I understand the phrase that here occurs in the poet's prose. If by the aristocracy of nature is meant the pre-eminence of mere natural genius, the idea is not peculiarly applicable to your situation, and by comprehending too much will be found to contain nothing at all. In that view, a philosophical poem might be written to celebrate the natural genius of a coalheaver, or hackneycoachman, for I presume that such genius, if its exists, may be found alike in all situations of life. But I would ask whether in the creation of her aristocracy, Nature does not give a carte blanche to Education? It seems pretty plain, at least, that Education must affix the seal before the patent can be issued. If by the aristocracy of nature is meant the nobility which results from educated genius, or genius sufficiently educated to make itself seen, the principle contended for may be true, but it is certainly not new. Every body pays homage to genius where it appears, and where it does not appear, homage cannot be expected.

If again, it is not intended to refer to genius but to good sense or respectability, here too the sentiment is sufficiently trite, but it is not very relevant. Every body may not pay "homage," in a literal sense, to an honest or sagacious man in a shabby coat, but every body that knows what he is will have a certain regard for him proportioned to his good qualities. But it is one thing to have a liking or

respect for a worthy or decent man in the rank of a mechanic or travelling merchant, and another thing to exalt him above other men, equally worthy and decent, but of higher station and accomplishments, and to make him the oracle of a philosophical poem.

In short, the more I consider the expression in which this apology for you is conveyed, the less I understand it. We are all of us in one sense of nature's making, and in another sense, we are all of us the product, not of nature, but of education and society. Mr Wordsworth does not mean to set up as a model a man of natural genius with no education and no calling or social employment; for he gives even you some education, and he gives you a profession not more natural than that of a general officer or a retired judge. If some education then may enter into the composition of nature's aristocracy. why not a good education? If some profession may be allowed, why not the best and most extensive? Sure I am that if the aristocracy of nature may be illustrated in you, it may be equally found in me, being as I am of at least equal natural endowments, and of analogous though superior pursuits. If nature allows her "peerage" to tramp about the country as pedlars, she need not to object to recognize them when driving their gig as bagmen. Upon the whole, I suspect we should return to our old notions on this subject, and admit that the seeming prejudices of society are here, as elsewhere, founded in truth. As a general rule, it will be found that noblemen, gentlemen, and bagmen are in the most favourable position for mental improvement, and that the idea of making heroes and sages out of pedlars or potters is visionary and absurd. But indeed, Mr Wordsworth shows us, in Peter Bell, the true ef. fects of a wandering pedestrian life. Peter, from birth and habits might have been called up to nature's House of Lords as well as yourself. But the truth there was to clear to be tampered with; and thus one of your associates by act of Parliament, see supra, Edward VI., is written down a blackguard, while you, who are not essentially different, are promoted to be a gentleman and an aristocrat.

But Mr. Wordsworth refers to an authority in prose in support of his

poetry. He appeals to Heron's Journey in Scotland. Now I have been often enough at the assizes as party or bystander to know that this evidence would be treated as coming from a somewhat suspicious quarter. Heron, if I mistake not, was a native of Scotland, and it would be rash to trust too far to the testimony of a Scotchman, particularly of the last century, where the honour of his country, or the station of his countrymen, was involved. But let us examine what the witness says, and see whether it bears internal evidence of sober truth and strict impartiaility. Passing over the reference to ancient history as mere hearsay, and the sneer against missionaries as not to the purpose, we come to his description of what he professes to know as actual facts.

"It is further to be observed," Mr Heron says, "for the credit of this most useful class of men, that they commonly contribute, by their personal manners, no less than by the sale of their wares, to the refinement of the people among whom they travel." This is somewhat new. In this view, the manners of a packman should have become proverbial, yet I never heard them so characterised. A vagrant Chesterfield is quite an original idea. Their dealings form them to great quickness of wit and acuteness of judgment !" That you may be acute enough in your dealings I don't deny, but it is a pity that your poet's plan did not permit him to give us specimens of the wit here lauded. May we soon expect a collection of your bon mots ? If you don't favour us however, we can fall back on the merry and humorous achievements of John Cheap the Chapman, a pamphlet well known in your own country, affording, for the price of one halfpenny, a good deal of wit, but not certainly remarkable for that refinement which Mr Heron had praised in the preceding sentence. "Having constant occasion to recommend themselves and their goods, they acquire habits of the most obliging attention, and the most insinuating address." In recommending your goods, Puff the auctioneer was probably nothing to you, but as to your insinuating address, what did it consist in beyond what belongs to the most ordinary shopman in the most ordi

"As in

nary haberdasher's shop? their peregrinations they have opportunity of contemplating the man ners of various men, and various cities, they become eminently skilled in the knowledge of the world." What are the various cities you were acquainted with? Two or three at the most; Perth and Dumfries, Edinburgh and Carlisle.

This

But what parts of those cities did you visit? Not certainly the most elegant or improving; who ever saw you on Prince's Street in the metropolis of your own country? No one; you put up at the Highlander's Salutation in the Grassmarket, no ever visited a more fashionable dis trict than the Candlemaker Row, or Bristo Port: while your houffs in the other places were of a similar respectability. "As they wander, each alone, through thinly inhabited districts, they form habits of reflection and sublime contemplation." seems the main passage in the evi dence; but I think I have already obviated it. I can allow of no sublime contemplation in a traveller who bears a burden on his back, that won't tet him hold up his head, or look beyond his shoe-tie. "With all these qualifications, no wonder that they should often be, in remote parts of the country, the BEST MIRRORS OF FASHION and censors of manners; and should contribute much to polish the roughness, and soften the rusticity of our peasantry!" O Murdoch, this of you; you the best mirror of fashion! with those corduroy knees, drab-coloured spats, as you call them, and ribbed blue stockings between; not to speak of that waistcoat with the flaps! This is too much; it out-Herons Heron. "Gentleman of the jury," as my friend Buckram used to say, "after this can you believe a word that this witness has told you?

From the rest of this Mr Heron's statement it appears that the travelling merchant turns out after all to be no waiter, but a Knight Templar. "When, after twenty years absence in that honourable line of employment, he returned with his acquisitions to his native country, he was regarded as a gentleman to all intents and purposes !" So when the Pedlar does not rest satisfied with belonging to the aristocracy of nature, but takes his place as an Esquire in the ranks of artificial socie