It was all firm and flat-no ridges rose
Like graves of children-basket, butter, cloth,
Were all one piece coherent.-To his home

The boy returned right sad and sore aghast.'

Time passed on; but nobody knew, or cared, who the traveller was, or what had become of him. At length, however, Messrs. Wadsworth, Southey, and Wilson, met upon the border of the Lake; and, after holding a very high argument, on something like

similitude,

In dissimilitude, man's sole delight,

And all the sexual course of things,'

'He of the Palms with startled eye looked round,
And such an eye, as any one may guess
To whom that eye is known-for he beheld
What I yet shudder to define.-"Great God!'
The youth exclaimed, see what is lying there!'
He of the laurel, who was next to him,
Nay, haply nigher to the shore than he,
Stared in amaze, but he can nothing see;
And in his haste, instead of looking down
Into the water, he looked up to Heaven:
A most preposterous habit, which the bard
Practises ever and anon-I looked
Into the peaceful lake, and there beheld
The bones of one who once in mortal life

Had lived and moved-a human skeleton!'

This circumstance, of course, gives occasion to several pages of moralization: and then the poem ends with the apparition of a tad-pole; which is described with all due pomp,

and there had come

Most timeously, by Providence sent forth,

To close this solemn and momentous tale.'

Next comes the Flying Taylor. In the burial-ground of Grassmere church, underneath a stunted yew,'' some three yards distant from the gravel walk,' on the left hand side,' we are told we shall find a grave with unelaborate headstone.'

There pause-and with no common feelings read

This short inscription- Here lies buried

The Flying Tailor, aged twenty-nine!' '

In his infantine days, this great personage was considered

as rather sickly and feeble.

'But mark the wondrous change-ere he was put

By his mother into breeches, Nature strung

The muscular part of his economy

To an unusual strength, and he could leap,

All unimpeded by his petticoats,

Over the stool on which his mother sat
When carding wool, or cleansing vegetables,
Or meek performing other household tasks.
Cunning he watched his opportunity,

And oft, as house-affairs, did call her thence,
Overleapt Hugh, a perfect whirligig,

More than six inches o'er th' astonished stool.

In his boyish days he was a great hand at leap-frog too;

but

'No more of this-suffice it to narrate,
In his tenth year he was apprenticed
Unto a Master Tailor by a strong
And regular indenture of seven years,
Commencing from the date the parchment bore,
And ending on a certain day, that made
The term complete of seven solar years.'
He spurned his cross-legged occupation.

Oft too, when striving all he could to finish
The stated daily task, the needle's point,
Slanting insidious from th' eluded stitch,
Hath pinched his finger, by the thimble's mail
In vain defended, and the crimson blood
Distained the lining of some wedding-suit,
A dismal omen! that to mind like his,
Apt to perceive in slightest circumstance
Mysterious meaning, yielded sore distress
And feverish perturbation, so that oft

He scarce could eat his dinner-nay, one night
He swore to run from his apprenticeship,
And go on board a first-rate man-of-war,
From Plymouth lately come to Liverpool,
Where, in the stir and tumult of a crew
Composed of many nations, 'mid the roar
Of wave and tempest, and the deadlier voice
Of battle, he might strive to mitigate

The fever that consumed his mighty heart.'

But other doom was his. A troop of tumblers came into the village; one of whom, in throwing a somerset over three horses,

'Put out his shoulder, and was otherwise

Considerably bruised, especially

About the loins and back.'

This sad catastrophe disabled him so much, that the master bid up for another to supply his place. The Flying Tailor

'Leapt into the circle, and agreed

To supply the place of him who had been hurt.

A shout of admiration and surprise

Then tore heaven's concave, and completely fill'd
The little field, where near a hundred people
Were standing in a circle round and fair.'

Hereupon we have it explained very philosophically why "That 'mid a given number, say threescore

Of tailors, more men of agility

Will issue out, than from an equal show

From any other occupation-say

Smiths, barbers, bakers, butchers, or the like.'

The which fact is explained by laying down this fundamental proposition:-that,

All action not excessive must partake

The nature of excessive action-so

That in all human beings who keep moving,
Unconscious cultivation of repose

Is going on in silence. Be it so.'

James Rigg, the third personage on Mr. Wadsworth's canvass, was, by trade, a blaster of stones; in which perilous vocation he had put out both of his eyes. When the rock blew up, which quenched them, he was very much puzzled to know whence the noise came; and straightway fell to reasoning about the probabilities of its proceeding from any thing but the blasting of the rock.

'It next perhaps occurr'd to him to ask,

Himself, or some one near him, if the sound
Was not much louder than those other sounds,
Fondly imagined by him,-and both he,
And that one near him, instantly replied
Unto himself, that most assuredly
The noise proceeded from the very stone,
Which they two had so long been occupied
In boring, and that probably some spark,

Struck from the gavelock 'gainst the treacherous flint,
Had fallen amid the powder, and so caused
The stone t'explode, as gunpowder will do,
With most miraculous force, especially
When close ramm'd down into a narrow bore,
And cover'd o'er with a thin layer of sand
To exclude the air, else otherwise the grain
Escaping from the bore, would waste itself
In the clear sky, and leave the bored stone
Lying unmoved upon the verdant earth,
Like some huge creature stretch'd in lazy sleep
Amid the wilderness,—or lying dead
Beneath the silence of the summer sun.'

James Rigg was obliged thenceforth to bore no more rocks; and he used to go about the country on an ass-for what specific purposes, the muse has not deigned to inform us. It was

'On Sunday morn, at half past six o'clock' that he awoke our slumbering bard, and held a conversation with him before the door. The lofty matters, that were here debated, we cannot think of detailing in unelaborate proseand we shall not be able to make room for the poetry. Thus, however, closeth this 'momentous tale.'

While thus confabulating with James Rigg,
Even at that moment when such silence lay
O'er all my cottage, as by mystic power
Belonging to the kingdom of the ear,
O'erthrew at once all old remembrances
Even at that moment over earth, and air,
The waving forest, and the sleeping lake,
And the far sea of mountains that uplifted
Its stately billows through the clear blue sky,
Came such a sound, as if from her dumb trance
Awaken'd Nature, starting suddenly,
Were jealous of insulted majesty.

And sent through continent and trembling isle
Her everlasting thunders. Such a crash,

Tore the foundations of the earth, and shook

The clouds that slumber'd on the breast of heaven!

It was the parlour-bell that suddenly

An unknown hand had rung. I cast my eyes

Up the long length of bell-rope, and I saw
The visible motion of its iron tongue,

By heaven I saw it tinkling. Fast at first,

O most unearthly fast, then somewhat slower,
Next very slow indeed, until some four

Or half-a-dozen minutes at the most,

By Time's hand cut from off the shorten'd hour,
It stopp'd quite of itself-and idly down,

Like the sear leaf upon th' autumnal bough

Dangled!'

On the whole, if our readers are any like ourselves, we think they cannot help laughing at these parodies. We suspect they have been manufactured by some critic, who is particularly offended with Mr. Wadsworth's poetry, and has undertaken to point out its ingredients of offence in a practical way. Our readers all know the characteristics of that school, to which Mr. Wadsworth belongs. Its followers are men who have powerful minds enough, and can use as good

language as any writers whatsoever: but they abuse both their intellectual and their literary powers, by laying them out on the most trifling objects. They use large machinery in small manufactories. They handle pins with blacksmith's tongs, and draw them out under a trip-hammer. They are very much addicted, also, to making nice distinctions-drawing close parallels-giving exact dates-and ascertaining precise localities; four operations which are better calculated, than any other, to break the charm of poetic fiction, and, by depriving the imagination of her indefinite liberty of flight, to reduce lofty description down to plain matter-of-fact detail. In short they take away the very soul and body of poetry, and leave us nothing but the frigid cerement which enveloped them. We have the language of poets, without any of their fine frenzy. Our parodist has skilfully taken advantage of this bad taste; and our readers will observe, that the most laughable passages are those in which some date, or some locality, or some distinction, is given with the accuracy of a historian and the niceness of a metaphysician.

The imitations of Messrs. Hogg, Southey, and Wilson are so much poorer than those we have just been laughing at, that we shall make no extracts from them. Indeed, we consider the parodies upon Mr. Wadsworth's poetry as the redeeming part of this volume. The powers of the writer (if it is all done by one hand) do not appear to be versatile enough to catch and caricature the faults of the other poets; and we suspect, he only tried his pen upon them, in order to make up a book.

ART. IX.-Intelligence in Science, Literature, and the Arts. THE interest which has lately been excited respecting the Ex-Emperor Napoleon, by the publication of Mr. Warden's Letters, has induced the publisher to accompany the present Number of the Magazine with a portrait of that celebrated personage. It is a copy of the one which was prefixed to the Letters abovementioned, and of which Mr. Warden speaks in the following language. I was induced to give a Plate of Napoleon, which is copied from the French engraving, because, I consider myself as perfectly Master of his Lineaments, and I think it the most decided Likeness that has been given of him.'

The Rev. Ezra Stiles Ely, of this city, author of A Contrast between Calvinism and Hopkinsianism,' of Two Journals,' of 'Ten Sermons on Faith,' and of the NOTES to the American Edition of REID'S WORKS, intends soon to publish a work to be entitled 'Conversations on the Human Soul; in which the Elements of Anthropsychia are familiarly explained.’ It will be the chief object of the writer, we understand, to present to the public a small volume, which shall summarily exhibit in a systematic form, and in familiar language, those fundamental principles of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, that will endure the test of common sense, which have been published by Bacon, Locke, Edwards, Reid, Kames, Hume and Stewart.