He sate, and even in their fixèd lineaments,

Or from the power of a peculiar eye,
Or by creative feeling overborne,

Or by predominance of thought oppressed,
Even in their fixed and steady lineaments
He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind,
Expression ever varying!
Thus informed,

He had small need of books; for many a

tale

Traditionary, round the mountains hung, And many a legend, peopling the dark

woods,

Nourished Imagination in her growth, And gave the Mind that apprehensive

power

By which she is made quick to recognize The moral properties and scope of things. But eagerly he read, and read again, Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied;

The life and death of martyrs, who sustained,

With will inflexible, those fearful pangs Triumphantly displayed in records left Of persecution and the Covenant — times Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour!

And there, by lucky hap, had been pre

served

A straggling volume, torn and incomplete, That left half-told the preternatural tale, Romance of giants, chronicle of fiends, Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts Strange and uncouth; dire faces, figures dire,

Sharp-kneed, sharp-elbowed, and leanankled too,

With long and ghostly shanks - forms which once seen

Could never be forgotten!

In his heart, Where Fear sate thus, a cherished visitant, Was wanting yet the pure delight of love By sound diffused, or by the breathing air, Or by the silent looks of happy things, Or flowing from the universal face Of earth and sky. But he had felt the

Whom Nature, by whatever means, has taught

To feel intensely, cannot but receive.

Such was the Boy - but for the growing Youth

What soul was his, when, from the naked top

Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked

Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay Beneath him: - Far and wide the clouds

were touched,

And in their silent faces could he read Unutterable love. Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank The spectacle: sensation, soul, and form, All melted into him; they swallowed up His animal being; in them did he live, And by them did he live; they were his

life.

In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living God, Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request;

Rapt into still communion that transcends The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, His mind was a thanksgiving to the power That made him; it was blessedness and love!

A Herdsman on the lonely mountain tops,

Such intercourse was his, and in this sort
Was his existence oftentimes possessed.
O then how beautiful, how bright, ap-

peared

The written promise! Early had he learned

To reverence the volume that displays
The mystery, the life which cannot die;
But in the mountains did he feel his faith.
All things, responsive to the writing, there
Breathed immortality, revolving life,
And greatness still revolving; infinite:
There littleness was not; the least of
things

Seemed infinite; and there his spirit shaped

Her forms, and with the spirit of her forms,

He clothed the nakedness of austere truth. While yet he lingered in the rudiments Of science, and among her simplest laws, His triangles-they were the stars of heaven,

The silent stars! Oft did he take delight
To measure the altitude of some tall crag
That is the eagle's birthplace, or some
peak

Familiar with forgotten years, that shows,
Inscribed upon its visionary sides,
The history of many a winter storm,
Or obscure records of the path of fire.

And thus before his eighteenth year
was told,

Accumulated feelings pressed his heart With still increasing weight; he was o'erpowered

By Nature; by the turbulence subdued Of his own mind; by mystery and hope, And the first virgin passion of a soul Communing with the glorious universe. Full often wished he that the winds might

That live in darkness. From his intellect And from the stillness of abstracted thought

He asked repose; and, failing oft to win The peace required, he scanned the laws of light

Amid the roar of torrents, where they send From hollow clefts up to the clearer air A cloud of mist that, smitten by the sun, Varies its rainbow hues. But vainly thus, And vainly by all other means, he strove To mitigate the fever of his heart.

In dreams, in study, and in ardent thought,

Thus was he reared; much wanting to assist

The growth of intellect, yet gaining more, And every moral feeling of his soul

Their farewell benediction, but with hearts

Foreboding evil. From his native hills He wandered far; much did he see of men,1

Their manners, their enjoyments, and pursuits,

Their passions and their feelings; chiefly those

Essential and eternal in the heart,
That, 'mid the simpler forms of rural life,
Exist more simple in their elements,
And speak a plainer language. In the
woods,

A lone Enthusiast, and among the fields,
Itinerant in this labor, he had passed
The better portion of his time; and there
Spontaneously had his affections thriven
Amid the bounties of the year, the peace
And liberty of nature; there he kept
In solitude and solitary thought
His mind in a just equipoise of love.
Serene it was, unclouded by the cares
Of ordinary life; unvexed, unwarped
By partial bondage. In his steady course,
No piteous revolutions had he felt,
No wild varieties of joy and grief.
Unoccupied by sorrow of its own,
His heart lay open; and, by nature tuned
And constant disposition of his thoughts
To sympathy with man, he was alive
To all that was enjoyed where'er he went,
And all that was endured; for, in himself
Happy, and quiet in his cheerfulness,
He had no painful pressure from without
That made him turn aside from wretch-
edness
With coward fears.
suffer

He could afford to

With those whom he saw suffer. Hence it came

That in our best experience he was rich,
And in the wisdom of our daily life.
For hence, minutely, in his various rounds,
He had observed the progress and decay
Of many minds, of minds and bodies too;
The history of many families;

How they had prospered; how they were o'erthrown

By passion or mischance, or such misrule
Among the unthinking masters of the earth
As makes the nations groan.
1 See Note.

This active course He followed till provision for his wants Had been obtained; - the Wanderer then resolved

To pass the remnant of his days, untasked With needless services, from hardship free.

His calling laid aside, he lived at ease: But still he loved to pace the public roads And the wild paths; and, by the summer's warmth

Invited, often would he leave his home And journey far, revisiting the scenes That to his memory were most endeared. - Vigorous in health, of hopeful spirits, undamped

By worldly-mindedness or anxious care; Observant, studious, thoughtful, and re

freshed

By knowledge gathered up from day to day;

Thus had he lived a long and innocent life.

The Scottish Church, both on himself and those

With whom from childhood he grew up, had held

The strong hand of her purity; and still
Had watched him with an unrelenting eye.
This he remembered in his riper age
With gratitude, and reverential thoughts.
But by the native vigor of his mind,
By his habitual wanderings out of doors,
By loneliness, and goodness, and kind
works,

Whate'er, in docile childhood or in youth,
He had imbibed of fear or darker thought
Was melted all away; so true was this,
That sometimes his religion seemed to me
Self-taught, as of a dreamer in the woods;
Who to the model of his own pure heart
Shaped his belief, as grace divine inspired,
And human reason dictated with awe.

And surely never did there live on earth A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports

And teasing ways of children vexed not

him;

Indulgent listener was he to the tongue Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's

tale,

To his fraternal sympathy addressed, Obtain reluctant hearing.

The fence where that aspiring shrub looked out

Upon the public way.

It was a plot

Of garden ground run wild, its matted weeds

And eyed its waters till we seemed to feel One sadness, they and I. For them a bond

Of brotherhood is broken: time has been When, every day, the touch of human hand

them up