"The man turned pale, and made no reply. The officer looked round again, examined the earth more closely, stamped with his foot, and at last thought he felt a vibration, as if the ground below were hollow. He scrutinized every inch, and at length saw something like a loose board: he raised it up, and then, alas! he beheld Cathélineau, in front of his three companions, with his pistols in his hand ready to fire. The officer had not a moment to deliberate. He fired: Cathélineau fell dead, and his companions were seized. This story was told us by the keeper of the Musée, and afterwards confirmed by an officer who was one of the party employed."

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We almost regret to have closed a light article with so heavy a stone" as this. ("To tell him that he shall be annihilated," saith Sir Thomas Browne, "is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man.") But the snuff-taker, with his magic box in hand, is prepared for chances. As the Turk takes to his pipe, and the sailor to his roll of tobacco, so he to his pinch; and he is then prepared for whatsoever comes, for a melancholy face with the melancholy, or a laugh with the gay.

Another pinch, reader, before we part.

WORDSWORTH AND MILTON.

or so,

T is allowed on all hands, now, that there are no sonnets in any language comparable with Wordsworth's. Even Milton must yield the palm. He has written but about a dozen Wordsworth some hundreds: and though nothing can surpass the inspired grandeur of that on the Piedmontese Massacre, the tenderness of those on his Blindness and on his Deceased Wife, the grave dignity of that to a Young Lady, or the cheerful and Attic grace of those to Lawrence and Cyriac Skinner,' as is finely said by the writer of an article in the 'Edinburgh Review' on Glassford's Lyrical Translations,' yet many of Wordsworth's equal even these; and the long and splendid array of his sonnets deploying before us in series after series- astonishes us by the proof it affords of the inexhaustible riches of his imaginative genius and his moral wisdom. One series on the river Duddon, two series dedicated to Liberty, three series on our Ecclesiastical History, miscellaneous sonnets in multitudes, and those last poured forth as clear and bright and strong as the first that issued from the sacred spring!" Blackwood's Magazine.

Most true is this. Wordsworth's untired exuber

ance is indeed astonishing; though it becomes a little less so when we consider that his genius has been fortunate in a long life of leisure, his opinions not having rendered it necessary to him to fight with difficulties, and daily cares, and hostile ascendencies, as Milton's did,

Exposed to daily fraud, contempt, and wrong,

With darkness and with dangers compassed round."

In that condition sate the great blind epic poet; and, after having performed an active as well as contemplative part for his earthly sojourn, still combined action with contemplation in a mighty narrative, and built the adamantine gates of another world. In no invidious regard for one great poet against another do we say it, but in justice to fame itself, and in the sincerest reverence of admiration for both. With the exception of Shakespeare (who included everybody), Wordsworth has proved himself the greatest contemplative poet this country has produced. His facility is wonderful. He never wants the fittest words for the finest thoughts. He can express at will those innumerable shades of feeling which most other writers, not unworthy too, in their degree, of the name of poets, either dismiss at once as inexpressible, or find SO difficult of embodiment as to be content with shaping them forth but seldom, and reposing from their labors. And rhyme, instead of a hinderance, appears to be a positive help. It serves to concentrate his thoughts, and make them closer and more precious. Milton did not pour forth sonnets in this manner, poems in hundreds of little channels, all solid and

a

fluent gold. No; but he was venting himself, instead, in "Paradise Lost." “Paradise Lost," if the two poets are to be compared, is the set-off against Wordsworth's achievement in sonnet-writing. There is the "Excursion," to be sure; but the "Excursion" is made up of the same purely contemplative matter. It is a long-drawn song of the nightingale, as the sonnets are its briefer warbles. There is no eagleflight in the "Excursion;" no sustainment of a mighty action; no enormous hero, bearing on his wings the weight of a lost eternity, and holding on, nevertheless, undismayed, firm-visaged through faltering chaos, the combatant of all chance and all power, vision, that, if he could be seen now, would be seen in the sky like a comet, remaining, though speeding, – visible for long nights, though rapidly voyaging, — a sight for a universe, an actor on the stage of infinity. There is no such robust and majestic work as this in Wordsworth. Compared with Milton, he is but as a dreamer on the grass, though a divine one; and worthy to be compared as a younger, a more fluentspeeched, but less potent brother, whose business it is to talk and think, and gather together his flocks of sonnets like sheep (beauteous as clouds in heaven); while the other is abroad, more actively moving in the world, with contemplations that take the shape of events. There are many points of resemblance between Wordsworth and Milton. They are both serious men; both in earnest; both maintainers of the dignity of poetry in life and doctrine; and both are liable to some objections on the score of sectarianism, and narrow theological views. But Milton widened

these as he grew old; and Wordsworth, assisted by the advancing light of the times (for the greatest minds are seldom as great as the whole instinctive mind of society), cannot help conceding or qualifying certain views of his own, though timidly, and with fear of a certain few, such as Milton never feared. Milton, however, was never weak in his creed, whatever it was: he forced it into width enough to embrace all place and time, future as well as present. Wordsworth would fain dwindle down the possibilities of heaven and earth within the views of a Church-ofEngland establishment. And he is almost entirely a retrospective poet. The vast future frightens him; and he would fain believe that it is to exist only in a past shape, and that shape something very like one of the smallest of the present, with a vestry for the golden church of the New Jerusalem, and beadles for the "limitary cherubs." Now, we hope and believe that the very best of the past will merge into the future how long before it be superseded by a still better, we cannot say. And we own that we can conceive of nothing better than some things which already exist, in venerable as well as lovely shapes. But how shall we pretend to limit the vast flood of coming events, or have such little faith in nature, providence, and the enlightened co-operation of humanity; as to suppose that it will not adjust itself in the noblest and best manner? In this respect, and in some others, Mr. Wordsworth's poetry wants universality. He calls upon us to sympathize with his churches, and his country flowers, and his blisses of solitude; and he calls well: but he wants one of the