This is the lamentation of _Eve_ on being driven out of Paradise. Adam’s reflections are in a different strain, and still finer. After expressing his submission to the will of his Maker, he says: ‘This most afflicts me, that departing hence As from his face I shall be hid, depriv’d His blessed countenance; here I could frequent With worship place by place where he vouchsaf’d Presence divine, and to my sons relate, On this mount he appeared, under this tree Stood visible, among these pines his voice I heard, here with him at this fountain talk’d: So many grateful altars I would rear Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone Of lustre from the brook, in memory Or monument to ages, and thereon Offer sweet-smelling gums and fruits and flow’rs: In yonder nether world where shall I seek His bright appearances or footstep trace? For though I fled him angry, yet recall’d To life prolong’d and promis’d race, I now Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts Of glory, and far off his steps adore.’ W. H. NO. 29.] OBSERVATIONS ON MR. WORDSWORTH’S POEM [AUG. 21, 28, THE EXCURSION 1814. The poem of The _Excursion_ resembles that part of the country in which the scene is laid. It has the same vastness and magnificence, with the same nakedness and confusion. It has the same overwhelming, oppressive power. It excites or recalls the same sensations which those who have traversed that wonderful scenery must have felt. We are surrounded with the constant sense and superstitious awe of the collective power of matter, of the gigantic and eternal forms of nature, on which, from the beginning of time, the hand of man has made no impression. Here are no dotted lines, no hedge-row beauties, no box-tree borders, no gravel walks, no square mechanic inclosures; all is left loose and irregular in the rude chaos of aboriginal nature. The boundaries of hill and valley are the poet’s only geography, where we wander with him incessantly over deep beds of moss and waving fern, amidst the troops of red-deer and wild animals. Such is the severe simplicity of Mr. Wordsworth’s taste, that we doubt whether he would not reject a druidical temple, or time-hallowed ruin as too modern and artificial for his purpose. He only familiarises himself or his readers with a stone, covered with lichens, which has slept in the same spot of ground from the creation of the world, or with the rocky fissure between two mountains caused by thunder, or with a cavern scooped out by the sea. His mind is, as it were, coëval with the primary forms of things; his imagination holds immediately from nature, and ‘owes no allegiance’ but ‘to the elements.’