"What wonder, then, if I, whose favourite School Hath been the fields, the roads, and rural lanes, Look'd on this Guide with reverential love? Each with the other pleased, we now pursued Our journey--beneath favourable skies. Turn wheresoe'er we would, he was a light Unfailing: not a hamlet could we pass, Rarely a house, that did not yield to him Remembrances; or from his tongue call forth Some way-beguiling tale. --Nor was he loth to enter ragged huts, Huts where his charity was blest; his voice Heard as the voice of an experienced friend. And, sometimes, where the Poor Man held dispute With his own mind, unable to subdue Impatience, through inaptness to perceive General distress in his particular lot; Or cherishing resentment, or in vain Struggling against it, with a soul perplex'd, And finding in herself no steady power To draw the line of comfort that divides Calamity, the chastisement of Heaven, From the injustice of our brother men; To him appeal was made as to a judge; Who, with an understanding heart, allay'd The perturbation; listen'd to the plea; Resolved the dubious point; and sentence gave So grounded, so applied, that it was heard With soften'd spirit--e'en when it condemn'd." What was to hinder such a man--thus born and thus bred--with such a youth and such a prime--from being in his old age worthy of walking among the mountains with Wordsworth, and descanting "On man, on nature, and on human life?" And remember he was a _Scotsman_--compatriot of CHRISTOPHER NORTH. What would you rather have had the Sage in "The Excursion" to have been? The Senior Fellow of a College? A head? A retired Judge? An Ex-Lord Chancellor? A Nabob? A Banker? A Millionaire? or, at once to condescend on individuals, Natus Consumere Fruges, Esquire? or the Honourable Custos Rotulorum? You have read, bright bold neophyte, the Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, upon the restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the estates and honours of his ancestors? "Who is he that bounds with joy On Carrock's side, a shepherd boy? No thoughts hath he but thoughts that pass Light as the wind along the grass. Can this be He that hither came In secret, like a smother'd flame? For whom such thoughtful tears were shed. For shelter and a poor man's bread?" Who but the same noble boy whom his high-born mother in disastrous days had confided when an infant to the care of a peasant. Yet there he is no longer safe--and "The Boy must part from Mosedale groves, And leave Blencathara's ragged coves, And quit the flowers that summer brings To Glenderamakin's lofty springs; Must vanish, and his careless cheer Be turn'd to heaviness and fear." Sir Launcelot Threlkeld shelters him till again he is free to set his foot on the mountains.