who has been an attentive reader of it, grand and inspiring passages crowd into the memory at the mere mention of its title. It is, more perhaps than any other of Wordsworth’s works, enveloped in the atmosphere of his soul, and vital with his individual life; and in all sympathetic minds, in all minds formed to feel its solemn thoughts and holy raptures, it feeds “A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire.” “The Excursion” was followed, in 1815, by the “White Doe of Rylstone,” a narrative poem, which Jeffrey said deserved the distinction of being the worst poem ever printed in a quarto volume, and which appears to us one of the very best. We do not believe the “White Doe” is much read, and its exceeding beauty, subtle grace, and profound significance, are not perceived in a hasty perusal. It is instinct with the most refined and ethereal imagination, and could have risen from the depths of no mind in which moral beauty had not been organized into moral character. Its tenderness, tempered by “thoughts whose sternness makes them sweet,” pierces into the very core of the heart. The purpose of the poem is to exhibit suffering as a purifier of character, and the ministry of sympathies, “Aloft ascending, and descending quite Even unto inferior kinds,” in allaying suffering; and this is done by a story sufficiently interesting of itself to engage the attention, apart from its indwelling soul of holiness. In the representation of the Nortons we have the best specimens of Wordsworth’s power of characterization, a power in which he is generally deficient, but which he here exhibits with almost dramatic force and objectiveness. “Peter Bell” and “The Wagoner,” which appeared in 1819, were executed in a spirit very different from that which animates the “White Doe.” They were originally written to illustrate a system, and seem to have been published, at this period, to furnish the enemies of Wordsworth some plausible excuse for attacking his growing reputation. “Peter Bell” was conceived and composed as far back as 1798, and though it exhibits much power and refinement of imagination, the treatment of the story is essentially ludicrous. But still it contains passages of description which are eminently Wordsworthian, and which the most accomplished of Wordsworth’s defamers never equaled. With what depth, delicacy, sweetness and simplicity are the following verses, for instance, conceived and expressed: He roved among the vales and streams, In the green wood and hollow dell; They were his dwellings night and day,— But nature ne’er could find the way Into the heart of Peter Bell. In vain, through every changeful year, Did Nature lead him as before; _A primrose by the river’s brim_ _A yellow primrose was to him,_ _And it was nothing more._ ——