ing"Ay, ay, another dozen of years will show us strange sights; but you and I can hardly expect to see them." "How so?" said W. "Why, my friend,

"Oh, I beg pardon," offence - but what?"

how old do you take me to be ?" said the other; "I meant no looking at W. more attentively-"you'll never see threescore, I'm of opinion." And, to show that he was not singular in so thinking, he appealed to all the other passengers; and the motion passed nem. con. that Wordsworth was rather over than under sixty. Upon this he told them the literal truth that he had not yet accomplished his thirty-ninth year. "God bless me!" said the climacterical man; so then, after all, you'll have a chance to see your childer get up like, and get settled! God bless me, to think of that!" And so closed the conversation, leaving to W. a pointed expression, of his own premature age, as revealing itself by looks, in this unaffected astonishment, amongst a whole party of plain men, that he should really belong to a generation of the forward-looking, who live by hope; and might reasonably expect to see a child of seven years old matured into a man.

I have gone into so large and circumstantial a review of my recollections in a matter that would have been trifling and tedious in excess, had their recollection re lated to a less important man; but, with a certain knowledge that the least of them will possess a lasting and a growing interest in connection with William Wordsworth a man who is not simply destined to be had in everlasting remembrance by every generation of men, but (which is a modification of the kind worth any multiplication of the degree) to be had in that sort of

remembrance which has for its shrine the heart of man - that world of fear and grief, of love and trembling hope, which constitutes the essential man; in that sort of remembrance, and not in such a remembrance as we grant to the ideas of a great philosopher, a great mathematician, or a great reformer. How different, how peculiar, is the interest which attends the great poets who have made themselves necessary to the human heart; who have first brought into consciousness, and next have clothed in words, those grand catholic feelings that belong to the grand catholic situations of life, through all its stages; who have clothed them in such words that human wit despairs of bettering them! How remote is that burning interest which settles upon men's living memories in our daily thoughts, from that which follows, in a disjointed and limping way, the mere nominal memories of those who have given a direction and movement to the currents of human thought, and who, by some leading impulse, have even quickened into life speculations appointed to terminate in positive revolutions of human power over physical agents! Mighty were the powers, solemn and serene is the memory, of Archimedes and Appolonius shines like "the starry Galileo," in the firmament of human genius; yet how frosty is the feeling associated with these names by comparison with that, which, upon every sunny brae, by the side of every ancient forest, even in the farthest depths of Canada, many a young innocent girl, perhaps at this very moment looking now with fear to the dark recesses of the infinite forest, and now with love to the pages of the infinite poet, until the fear is absorbed and forgotten in the love cherishes in her heart

for the name and person of Shakspeare! The one is abstraction, and a shadow recurring only by distinct efforts of recollection and even thus to none but the enlightened and the learned; the other is a household image, rising amongst household remembrances, never separated from the spirit of delight, and hallowed by a human love! Such a place in the affections of the young and the ingenuous, no less than of the old and philosophic, who happen to have any depth of feeling, will Wordsworth occupy in every clime and in every land; for the language in which he writes, thanks be to Providence, which has beneficently opened the widest channels for the purest and most elevating literature, is now ineradicably planted in all quarters of the earth; the echoes under every latitude of every longitude now reverberate English words; and all things seem tending to this result—that the English and the Spanish languages will finally share the earth between them. Wordsworth is peculiarly the poet for the solitary and meditative; and, throughout the countless myriads of future America and future Australia, no less than Polynesia and Southern Africa, there will be situations without end, fitted by their lonelinesss to favor his influence for centuries to come, by the end of which period it may be anticipated that education (of a more enlightened quality and more systematic than yet prevails) may have wrought such changes on the human species, as will uphold the growth of all philosophy, and, therefore, of all poetry which has its foundations laid in the heart of man.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

Ir was, I think, in the month of August, but certain y in the summer season, and certainly in the year 1807, that I first saw this illustrious man, the largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and the most comprehensive, in my judgment, that has yet existed amongst men. My knowledge of him as a man of most original genius began about the year 1799. A little before that time, Mr. Wordsworth had published the first edition (in a single volume) of the "Lyrical Ballads," at the end or the beginning of which was placed Mr. Coleridge's poem of the " Ancient Mariner,” as the contribution of an anonymous friend. It would be directing the reader's attention too much to myself, if I were to linger upon this, the greatest event in the unfolding of my own mind. Let me say in one word, that, at a period when neither the one nor the other writer was valued by the public-both having a long warfare to accomplish of contumely and ridicule before they could rise into their present estimation - I found in these poems"the ray of a new morning," and an absolute revelation of untrodden worlds, teeming with power and beauty, as yet unsuspected amongst men.

I had received directions for finding out the house where Coleridge was visting; and, in riding down a main street of Bridgewater, I noticed a gateway corresponding to the description given me. Under this was standing, and gazing about him, a man whom I shall describe. In height he might seem to be about five feet eight; (he

was, in reality, about an inch and a half taller, but his figure was of an order which drowns the height;) his person was broad and full, and tended even to corpulence; his complexion was fair, though not what painters technically style fair, because it was associated with black hair; his eyes were large and soft in their expression; and it was from the peculiar appearance of haze or dreaminess, which mixed with their light, that I recognized my object. This was Coleridge. I examined him steadfastly for a minute or more; and it struck me that he saw neither myself nor any other object in the street. He was in a deep reverie; for I had dismounted, made two or three trifling arrangements at an inn door, and advanced close to him, before he had apparently become conscious of my presence. The sound of my voice, announcing my own name, first awoke him; he started, and for a moment seemed at a loss to understand my purpose or his own situation; for he repeated rapidly a number of words which had no relation to either of us. There was no mauvaise honte in his manner, but simple perplexity, and an apparent difficulty in recovering his position amongst daylight realities. This little scene over, he received me with a kindness of manner so marked, that it might be called gracious. The hospitable family with whom he was domesticated, were distinguished for their amiable manners and enlightened understandings; they were descendants from Chubb, the philosophic writer, and bore the same name. For Coleridge, they all testified deep affection and esteem sentiments in which the whole town of Bridge water seemed to share; for in the evening, when the heat of the day had declined, I walked out with him ;