who, had they possessed the power, would have riveted the bondage of his people, he could and did soothe their angry paroxysms with lulling words of praise and hope, and, transforming their terribly real, physical, and moral griefs and ills into picturesque and sentimental sorrows, awakened a languid admiration, and a passing sympathy for a nation which could boast such beautiful music, and whose woes were so agreeably, so charmingly sung. Liberal opinions Moore supported by tongue and pen, but then they were fashionable within a sufficiently-extensive circle of notabilities, and had nothing of the coarseness and downrightness of vulgar Radicalism about them. The political idiosyncrasy of Moore is developed in the same essential aspect in his memoir of Lord Edward Fitzgerald as in his national songs. There is nothing impassioned, nothing which hurries the pulse or kindles the eye-but a graceful regret, a carefully-guarded appreciation of the acts and motives of that unfortunate and misguided nobleman run throughout. Moore was what men call a fair-weather politician-which means, not that storms do not frequently surround them but that by a prudent forethought, a happy avoidance of prematurely committing themselves, they contrive to make fair weather for themselves, however dark and tempestuous may be the time to other and less sagacious men, and who, when their sun does at last shine, come out with extreme effulgence and brilliancy. Moore, therefore, as a politician, was quite unexceptionable, though not eminent. He was at once a pensioned and unpurchased, and, we verily believe, unpurchasable partisan; an honest, sincere, and very mild patriot; a faithful, and at the same time prudent and circumspect lover of his country, its people, and its faith. There are very high-sounding names in the list of political celebrities, of whom it would be well if such real though not highly-flattering praise could be truly spoken. Moore's prose works require but little notice at our hands beyond that incidentally bestowed upon them in our passage through his works. None of them that we are acquainted with add at all to the reputation for genius acquired by his poetry. The flow and rhyme of verse are indispensable to carry the reader through stories without probability or interest, and to render men and women, not only without originality—that frequently happens but destitute of individualism, decently tolerable. We are ignorant of the contributions to the Edinburgh Review;' but they could scarcely have much enhanced the power and attractiveness of a periodical which in his time numbered amongst its contributors such names as Jeffrey, Brougham, Sidney Smith, Hallam, Macaulay, and others of that mint and standard. Moore is assigned by his friends a high rank amongst the defenders or apologists of the Church of Rome; and we believe his 'Travels,' like Cobbett's 'Reformation,' have been translated by papal authority and command into most of the languages of Europe. Of his merits in this department of literature, which is quite out of our way, we do not presume to offer an opinion. His book unquestionably displays a vast deal of research and learning; but whether it is so entirely perverse as its adversaries contend, or so pre-eminently irrefragable and convincing as its admirers assert, we really cannot say. It is, after all, in the home-life of individuals that their true character must be read and studied. The poet and the politician-the latter more especially-dwell, as regards their vocations, apart from the household tests which really measure the worth, the truth, the kindliness of individual men and women. Moore, we are pleased to be able to repeat, as a son, a husband, a father, a friend and neighbour, bore, and deservedly, the highest character. His domestic affections were ardent, tender, and sincere, and the brilliant accomplishments which caused his society to be courted by the great ones of the world shed its genial charm over the quiet fireside at which sat his wife, and in whose light and warmth the children whose loss have bowed him to the grave grew up only to bloom and perish. There have been much greater poets, more self-sacrificing, though perhaps no more sincere lovers of their country; but in the intimate relations of domestic life, and the discharge of its common, every-day, but sacred obligations, there are few men who have borne a more unspotted and deservedly-high reputation than Thomas Moore. One word as to the music-the airs of the melodies. They were for the most part, it is well known, arranged, and the accompaniments generally written, by Sir John Stevenson. The changes in the melody which not unfrequently occur, whether hurtfully or otherwise individual taste must determine, were, Moore himself emphatically assures us, invariably his own. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. THIS poet, whose works now occupy so large a space in English His father was law-agent to the Earl of Lonsdale, and that noble family in after years always kept a kindly watch over the welfare of the son. One of his brothers, Christopher, was afterwards well known as Dr Wordsworth, the master of Trinity College. The poet dedicated the 'Sonnets to the Duddon' to him, and at his death committed to his son the preparation of his biography. Another brother was commander of the Abergavenny East Indiaman, and perished in that ill-fated vessel. He seems to have been a man of susceptible temperament, and of a gentle and affectionate disposition, and his untimely fate was among the heaviest blows William ever experienced. His sister Emmeline was the constant companion of the poet down to the day of her death, and has left one or two of her poetical effusions mingled among his. She was a woman of exquisite sensibility, and of pure and well-stored mind, and was a great favourite not only with her brother, who has commemorated her in numerous beautiful pieces, but of all with whom she came in contact. Coleridge, one of the finest judges of female character, was charmed with her, and has left in one of his letters a delightful sketch of her manners and appearance. Wordsworth seems to have considered the domestic hearth too sacred for defined portraiture, and he has left no picture of his father, and, except in the 'Prelude,' only a single one of his mother. It depicts her watching him with fluttering heart, as he appeared before the vicar with his companions— 'A trembling, earnest company.' 'How fluttered then thy anxious heart for me, It was into the bosom of this cultivated English family that the old English spirit chose to descend in one of its noblest and purest forms. In due time the young poet was sent to Hawkeshead Grammar School, which was then under the mastership of a relative. We have few notices of his schoolboy life, but it is stated that he prosecuted with great zeal the study of the classics; and there can be no doubt, from such poems as 'Dion' and 'Laodamia,' that the stately and sculptural spirit of the highest classic poetry must have entered into and become a part of his very being. It is not unlikely that this would combine, with his passionate devotion to nature, to heighten his radical disinclination to join in the every-day occupations and sympathise with the ordinary interests of the world. If there be no high moral law by which a great poet is produced in immediate contact with the scenes most fitted to develop his peculiar genius—a law in no degree more inconceivable than that by which the camel is located among the sands of Arabia-it was, at all events, a happy accident which cast Wordsworth's lot among the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland. That whole district may be said to stand single in the world, and to have in the peculiar character of its beauty no parallel elsewhere. It is in the concentration of every variety of loveliness into a compass which in extent does not greatly tax the powers of the pedestrian, that it fairly defies rivalry, and affords the richest pabulum to the poetical faculty. There every form of mountain, rock, lake, stream, wood, and plain, from the conformation of the country, is crowded with the most prodigal abundance into a few square miles. Coleridge characterises it as a 'cabinet of beauties.' 'Each thing,' says he, is beautiful in itself; and the very passage from one lake, mountain, or valley to another is itself a beautiful thing again.' Wordsworth, in his own 'Description of the Country of the Lakes,' dwells with the zest and minuteness of idolatry upon every feature of that treasury of landscape. The idea he gives of the locality is very perfect and graphic. If the tourist were seated on a cloud midway between Great Gavel and Scafell, and only a few yards above their highest elevation, he would look down to the westward on no fewer than nine different valleys, diverging away from that point, like spokes from the nave of a wheel, towards the vast rim formed by the sands of the Irish Sea. These vales-Langdale, Coniston, Duddon, Eskdale, Wastdale, Ennerdale, Buttermere, Borrowdale, and Keswick-are of every variety of character; some with, and some without lakes; some richly fertile, and some awfully desolate. Shifting from the cloud, if the tourist were to fly a few miles eastward, to the ridge of old Helvellyn, he would find the wheel completed by the vales of Wytheburn, Ulswater, Hawswater, Grasmere, Rydal, and Ambleside, which bring the eye round again to Winandermere, in the vale of Langdale, from which it set out. From the sea or plain country all round the circumference of this fairy-land, along the gradually-swelling uplands, to the mighty mountains that group themselves in the centre, the infinite varieties of view may be imagined varieties made still more luxuriant by the different position of each valley towards the rising or setting sun. Thus a spectator in the vale of Winandermere will in summer see its golden orb going down over the mountains, while the spectator in Keswick will at the same moment mark it diffusing its glories over the low grounds. In this delicious land, dyed in a splendour of evershifting colours, the old customs and manners of England still lingered in the youth of Wordsworth, and took a firm hold of his heart, modifying all his habits and opinions. Though a deluge of strangers had begun to set in towards this retreat, and even the spirit of the factory threatened to invade it, still the dalesmen were impressed with that character of steadiness, repose, and rustic dignity, which has always possessed irresistible charms for the poet. Their cottages, which, from the numerous irregular additions made to them, seemed rather to have grown than to have been built, were covered over with lichens and mosses, and blended insensibly into the landscape, as if they were not human creations, but constituent parts of its own loveliness. In this old English Eden, all his schoolboy days, Wordsworth wandered restlessly, drawn hither and thither by his irresistible passion for nature, and receiving into his soul those remarkable photographs which were afterwards to delight his countrymen. There can be no doubt that the charms of this lake scenery added still more strength to the poet's peculiar tendencies, and developed a conservative sentiment, which, though temporarily overcome, afterwards reared itself up in haughtier majesty than before. The poet was naturally led to indulge much in out-of-door wanderings and pastimes, such as skating, of which he has left a picture unapproachable in its vividness and precision. Considering the effect of Wordsworth's subsequent theories upon his style, it is remarkable how pure, unaffected, and dignified it was at this time. Indeed, so far as style is concerned, he never, even in the vigour of manhood, excelled his juvenile productions. In 1786 he wrote some verses in anticipation of leaving school, which are chaste and sweet. Thus, in illustration of the idea, that wherever he might be, he would ever turn his look backward to his native regions-he says "Thus from the precincts of the west A lingering lustre fondly throws On the dear mountain-tops where first he rose.' Among his sonnets there is one written in very early youth, which is remarkable for precocious maturity of diction : 'Calm is all nature as a resting wheel: The kine are couched upon the dewy grass; Is hushed am I at rest. My Friends! restrain The officious touch that makes me droop again!' In the year 1789, also, two small pieces were produced which in simplicity and melody he never afterwards surpassed. The one is that beginning "Glide gently, thus for ever glide,' which has been always much admired; the other is brief enough for |