fect solemnity all the while being displayed in his weather-beaten, but handsome and warlike Celtic lineaments. The inspiration of the generous fluid prompted one strain merrier than the rest, behind the door of the Hall, and then the piper was silent-his lungs, I dare say, consenting much more than his will, for he has all the appearance of being a fine enthusiast in the delights and dignity of his calling. So much for Roderick of Skye, for such I think is his style.

His performance seemed to diffuse, or rather to heighten, a charming flow of geniality over the whole of the party, but nowhere could I trace its influence so powerfully and so delightfully as in the Master of the Feast. The music of the hills had given a new tone to his fine spirits, and the easy playfulness with which he gave vent to their buoyancy, was the most delicious of contagions. Himself temperate in the extreme (some late ill health has made it necessary he should be so), he sent round his claret more speedily than even I could have wished(you see I am determined to blunt the edge of all your sarcasms)—and I assure you we were all too well employed to think of measuring our bumpers. Do not suppose, however, that there is any thing like display or formal leading in Mr S's conversation. On the contrary, every

body seemed to speak the more that He was there to hear-and his presence seemed to be enough to make every body speak delightfully -as if it had been that some princely musician had tuned all the strings, and even under the sway of more vulgar fingers, they could not choose but discourse excellent music. His conversation, besides, is for the most part of such a kind, that all can take a lively part in it, although, indeed, none that I ever met with can equal himself. It does not appear as if he ever could be at a loss for a single moment for some new supply of that which constitutes its chief peculiarity, and its chief charm; the most keen perception, the most tenacious memory, and the most brilliant imagination, having been at work throughout the whole of his busy life, in filling his mind with a store of individual traits and anecdotes, serious and comic, individual and national, such as it is probable no man ever before possessed-and such, still more certainly, as no man of great original power ever before possessed in subservience to the purposes of inventive genius. A youth spent in wandering among the hills and valleys of his country, during which he became intensely familiar with all the lore of those grey-haired shepherds, among whom the

traditions of warlike as well as of peaceful times find their securest dwelling-place-or in more equal converse with the relics of that old school of Scottish cavaliers, whose faith had nerved the arms of so many of his own race and kindredsuch a boyhood and such a youth laid the foundation, and established the earliest and most lasting sympathies of a mind, which was destined, in after years, to erect upon this foundation, and improve upon these sympathies, in a way of which his young and thirsting spirit could have then contemplated but little. Through his manhood of active and honoured, and now for many years of glorious exertion, he has always lived in the world, and among the men of the world, partaking in all the pleasures and duties of society as fully as any of those who had nothing but such pleasures and such duties to attend to. Uniting, as never before they were united, the habits of an indefatigable student with those of an indefatigable observer-and doing all this with the easy and careless grace of one who is doing so, not to task, but to gratify his inclinations and his nature is it to be wondered that the riches of his various acquisitions should furnish a never-failing source of admiration even to those who have known him longest, and who know

him best? As for me, enthusiastic as I had always been in my worship of his genius-and well as his works had prepared me to find his conversation rich to overflowing in all the elements of instruction as well as of amusementI confess the reality entirely surpassed all my anticipations, and I never despised the maxim Nil admirari so heartily as now.

I can now say what I believe very few of my friends can do, that I have conversed with almost all the illustrious poets our contemporaries-indeed, Lord Byron is the only exception that occurs to me. Surely I need not tell you that I met each and all of them with every disposition to be gratified-and now I cannot but derive great pleasure from being able to look back upon what I have so been privileged to witness, and comparing in my own mind their different styles of conversation. The most original and interesting, as might be supposed, in this point of view, are the same whose originality has been most conspicuous in other things-this great Poet of Scotland, and the great Poet of the Lakes. It is, indeed, a very striking thing, how much the conversation of each of these men harmonizes with the peculiar vein of his mind, as displayed in more elaborate shapes-how one

forth

and entire the impression is, which the totality of each of them is calculated to leave upon the mind of an honouring, but not a bigotted observer. In listening to Wordsworth, it is impossible to forget for a single moment that the author of "The Excursion" is before you. Poetry has been with him the pure sole business of life-he thinks of nothing else, and he speaks of nothing else—and where is the man who hears him, that would for a moment wish it to be otherwise? The deep sonorous voice in which he pours his soul upon the high secrets of his divine artand those tender glimpses which he opens every now and then into the bosom of that lowly life, whose mysteries have been his perpetual inspirations-the sincere earnestness with which he details and expatiates—the innocent confidence which he feels in the heart that is submitted to his working--and the unquestioning command with which he seeks to fasten to him every soul that is capable of understanding his words—all these things are as they should be, in one that has lived the life of a hermit-musing, and meditating, and composing in the seclusion of a lonely cottage-loving and worshipping the Nature of Man, but partaking little in the pursuits, and knowing little of the habits, of the Men of the World.