finest enjoyments of life. Here am I, older than you are, and I have just walked from Falmouth to the Land's End, and from the Land's End to Barnstaple, with many a goodly zigzag besides, here and there, in Cornwall; and as for a chaise, I should be ashamed to put my foot in one for such a mere stride. To be candid, I won't have anything to do with a chaise, and so I suppose here we must part.”

“ Astounding !” said the great man, for he was evidently given to wonder—" and you've really done that, and are all the better for it. But no; it may do for you, but it would not do for me. I could not think of it!” “Then good-bye,” said I, extending my hand : “I thought we were just going to make a pleasant county acquaintance.” He stood as taken quite aback. Well, I had set my mind on going to Tintern with you, I don't know why--but four miles yet !” “Four fiddlesticks !” I said: “Come along, it will do you good, and we might have been half-way there now." He shook his head; but suddenly he said, “And you really think it will do me good ?” “I do.” “Then here goes," he said ; and on we marched, with a good hearty “Bravo!” on my part.

It was a stout climb to the Wynd Cliff, and my worthy and robust cotton-spinner perspired freely, and wiped his ample brow industriously, and exclaimed, “ This is very severe; but it may do me good.” Anon we stood on that splendid height the summit of the Wynd Cliff: and as my neophyte in peripatetics gazed down on the Wye far below, rushing with the inflowing tide between its lofty rocks, and then glanced on the scenes around, he burst forth with an emphatic "Glorious!”

“ You are right," I said ; “but button up your waistcoat and your coat, for the wind is cool here, and I will read

you from the guide-book all the objects you can see from this spot."

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« The extensive prospect commanded from this summit is generally extolled as one of the most beautiful in the island. The objects included are,—the new line of road from Chepstow to Tintern; the Wye winding in its circuitous course between its rocky and wooded banks ; the pretty hamlet of Lancaut, with the perpendicular cliffs of Bannagor, and the whole domain of Piercefield; a little to the left Berkeley Castle and Thornbury Church. On the right successively the castle and town of Chepstow; the majestic Severn, and the confluences of the rivers Wye and Severn; the Old and New Passages; Durdham Down, and Dundry Tower, near Bristol ; the mouth of the Avon and Portishead Point: to the south-west, the Holmes and Penarth Point, near Cardiff : and far away in the north-west the Black Mountains, forming a sublime background to the whole : thus embracing parts of nine counties, namely, Monmouth, Gloucester, Wilts, Somerset, Devon, Glamorgan, Brécon, Hereford, and Worcester. In the words of Mr. Roscoe—' The grouping of the landscape is perfect : I know of no picture more beautiful.

My great friend rested in full enjoyment of this magnificent scene--refted, that made no small part of the charm, for he had found a seat. He would have dwelt on each point, and endeavoured by questions to identify every one of them ; but I reminded him that he might take cold, and we proceeded on our way. But the great difficulty was now passed — the rest of the road was pretty level, and I endeavoured to keep up his attention by pointing out the beauties of the strangely-circling Wye to our right. I told him of the advantages people drew from walking; of the acquaintance it gave them with the people passing the same way, or as you fat awhile with them in their cottages.

“Ay,” said he, eagerly looking round, « that fitting in a cottage must be pleasant;” but there was no cottage visible. And I went on telling him of the many poems Wordsworth wrote from materials picked up in walking, or on the top of coaches-(“I prefer the top of coaches, myself,” said he.)-that Wordsworth at Goodrich Castle thus met with the little girl who gave him the idea of “ We are Seven;" and also walking along the Wye from Builth to Hay, he fell in with “ Peter Bell.” The countenance, gait, and figure of Peter, he tells us, were taken from a wild rover with whom he walked from Builth, and who told him strange stories. I then drew from my pocket the small Paris edition of Wordsworth's Poems. “This book,” I said, “ gave great vexation to Wordsworth ; for when he had not made fifty pounds in his whole life by the fale of his English edition, this pirated one had fold one hundred and twenty thousand copies in Paris. It annoyed him, but it will please us." And I began to read his

LINES WRITTEN ON REVISITING TINTERN.

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! And again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.-Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild fecluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark fycamore, and view
These plots of cottage ground, these orchard tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruit,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
Among the woods and copses, nor disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild ; these pastoral farms
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees !
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,

Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
The hermit fits alone.

These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din
Of towns and cities, have I owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration :-feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure : such, perhaps,
As have no sight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened:--that ferene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living foul :
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We fee into the life of things.

If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft,
In darkness, and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart,
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O fylvan Wye! Thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee !
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again :
While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years.

And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led : more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who fought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by,)
To me was all in all. I cannot paint
What then I was. The founding cataract
Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite: a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed, for such loss I would believe
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man :
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains : and of all that we behold
From this green earth ; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half create

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