It is in the record of his extra-academic life that the poet soars his freest flight, in passages where we have a very echo of the emotions of an emancipated worshiper of nature flying back to his loved resorts. Apart from its poetic value, the book is a graphical and interesting portraiture of the struggles of an ingenuous and impetuous mind to arrive at a clear insight into its own interior constitution and external relations, and to secure the composure of self-knowledge and of equally adjusted aspirations. As a poem it is likely to lay fast and enduring hold on pure and aspiring intellects, and to strengthen the claim of Wordsworth to endure with his land's language. * * * * * THE MONUMENT TO SIR ROBERT PEEL. A LETTER FROM WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'EXAMINER.' Now the fever hath somewhat subsided which came over the people from the grave of Sir Robert Peel, there is room for a few observations on his decease and on its consequences. All public writers, I believe, have expatiated on his character, comparing him with others who, within our times, have occupied the same position. My own opinion has invariably been that he was the wisest of all our statesmen; and certainly, though he found reason to change his sentiments and his measures, he changed them honestly, well weighed, always from conviction, and always for the better. He has been compared, and seemingly in no spirit of hostility or derision, with a Castlereagh, a Perceval, an Addington. a Canning. Only one of these is worthy of notice, namely Canning, whose brilliancy made his shallowness less visible, and whose graces, of style and elocution threw a vail over his unsoundness and lubricity. Sir Robert Peel was no satirist or epigrammatist: he was only a statesman in public life: only a virtuous and friendly man in private. _Par negotiis, nee supra_. Walpole alone possessed his talents for business. But neither Peel nor his family was enriched from the spoils of his country; Walpole spent in building and pictures more than double the value of his hereditary estate, and left the quadruple to his descendants. Dissimilar from Walpole, and from commoner and coarser men who occupied the same office, Peel forbade that a name which he had made illustrious should be degraded and stigmatized by any title of nobility. For he knew that all those titles had their origin and nomenclature from military services, and belong to military men, like their epaulets and spurs and chargers. They sound well enough against the sword and helmet, but strangely in law-courts and cathedrals: but, reformer as he was, he could not reform all this; he could only keep clear of it in his own person. I now come to the main object of my letter.