regard it) of Mr. Fox and his party, that a safe and honorable peace was practicable with the French nation, and that an ambitious conqueror like Bonaparte could be softened down into a commercial rival." Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 23, 24. Wordsworth's first publication was the "Descriptive Sketches," composed in 1791 and 1792, and printed in 1793, for the same publisher by whom Cowper's poems were given to the world. It was followed in the same year by the "Evening Walk." The former of these poems attracted the notice of Coleridge, then a student at Cambridge, who at once hailed it as most clearly announcing "the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon." The period was now rapidly approaching when it was necessary that he should mark out his future course. His friends were eager that he should take holy orders; but the unsettled state of his mind, arising from his interest in the French revolution, made him feel unsuited for that profession. It was at this time that his young friend, Raisley Calvert, bequeathed to Wordsworth, who had nursed him in his sickness, the sum of £900,- a bequest made entirely from a confidence that its recipient had powers which ought to be devoted to the benefit of mankind. This bequest, sufficient to meet all the necessary wants of his frugal life, at once decided him to devote his days to the work of a poet. With a few slight sources of additional income, it supported Wordsworth and his sister nearly eight years, until the sum of £8,500 was received at the death of Lord Lonsdale, from whom it had long been due to the poet's father's estate. For more than fifty years, our author pursued his undeviating way, with a lofty sense of the responsibility under which a poet writes, and an unceasing effort to perform worthily his work. Upon the receipt of Calvert's bounty, he settled in Racedown, Dorsetshire, with his sister, who, from his earliest years to the close of his life, was his constant companion, and whose intellectual and moral graces were his solace and delight.* "Coleridge, in 1797, at Stowey, thus describes Miss Wordsworth: 'Wordsworth and his exquisite sister are with me. She is a woman indeed, in mind I mean, and in heart; for her person is such that if you expected to see a pretty woman, you would think her ordinary, if you expected to see an ordinary woman you would think her pretty; but her manners are simple, ardent, impressive. In every motion her innocent soul outbeams so brightly, that who saw her would say "Guilt was a thing impossible with her." Her information various; her eye watchful in minutest observation of nature; and her taste a perfect electrometer.'". Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 100 -- 102. Here, and at Alfoxden, whither he removed, in 1797, to be near Coleridge, he labored upon his works, often rejoicing in the visits of his brother bard, who sometimes joined Wordsworth and his sister on their pedestrian excursions, and in the autumn of 1798, accompanied them to Germany, whence they returned the following spring. After their return, they settled at Grasmere; and never afterwards did they abandon the neighborhood of the Lakes. Hither, in a few years, Wordsworth brought a congenial companion to his sister and himself. Mary Hutchinson, to whom he was married in 1803, had sat with him at the same dame's school, and been his playmate in childhood and friend in youth. Of her worth it is enough to say, that the exquisite lines, so familiar to all, "She was a phantom of delight," were written by Wordsworth with reference to his wife, and are an exact portraiture of her character. The indebtedness of the poet to the sympathy and genial influence of two such noble women cannot be adequately told. At Grasmere, Allan Bank, and, from 1813 until his death, at Rydal Mount, Wordsworth and his family led their quiet and happy life. Five children were born to him, two of whom he soon followed to the grave. His dearly loved brother John, whose native taste and genius added strength to the ties of blood which bound him to the poet, was lost in the wreck of an East-Indiaman of which he had command, in 1805, the severest affliction Wordsworth was ever called to bear. The common household joys and griefs, the chief incidents of his life, were varied only by occasional excursions to Scotland, Wales, or the Continent. Worthy friends were not wanting, to complete his social happiness. Coleridge's intimacy with the bard of Rydal was a source of the highest enjoyment, and Southey's* friendship "In a letter to his friend Bernard Barton, in 1814, Southey says of Wordsworth: "I have known him nearly twenty years, and for about half that time, intimately. The strength and the character of his mind you see in the Excursion; and his life does not belie his writings; for, in every relation of life, and every point of view, he is a truly exemplary and admirable man. In conversation he is powerful beyond any of his contemporaries; and as a poet, I speak not from the partiality of friendship, nor because we have been so absurdly held up as both writing upon one concerted system of poetry, but with the most deliberate exercise of impartial judgment whereof I am capable, when I declare my full conviction that posterity will rank him with Milton."— Memoirs, &c., of Bernard Barton, p. 151. (Am. edition.) was most highly prized. With Sir George Beaumont, whom Sir Walter Scott gave the high praise of being "by far the most sensible and pleasing man he ever knew," Wordsworth lived on the most cordial terms of intimacy, and was indebted to him for many graceful acts of service. With the great "Wizard of the North" Wordsworth met for the first time in 1803, when making a tour in Scotland with his sister. Scott received them with frank cordiality, and "partly read and partly recited, sometimes in an enthusiastic style of chant, the first four cantos of the Lay of the Last Minstrel." He conducted his visitors to Melrose Abbey, and pointed out all its hidden beauties. The Memoirs, with the valuable notes of the American editor, portray a scene of touching interest in a meeting of the two great poets, in the autumn of 1831, when Wordsworth and his daughter visited Scott before his departure for Italy. In the library that evening sat the novelist, and awoke dark forebodings in the breasts of his friends by his remarks upon the singularity that Fielding and Smollett had both been driven abroad by declining health, and never returned." By his side sat Wordsworth, suffering so much from an inflammation of the eyes that he was hardly able to lift them up to the light, and wearing a deep green shade over them; and as Mr. Allan, the historical painter, looked at him, with his daughter at his side, he could not fail to think of Milton. In 1839, our poet went to Oxford to receive the degree of D. C. L. from the University. The enthusiasm of his reception, the "thunders of applause," as Dr. Arnold describes them, "repeated over and over again, with which he was greeted in the theatre, by undergraduates and Masters of Arts alike," were proud assurances of his triumph over the contempt and prejudices with which his name had once been regarded, and bore to his spirit "a nation's promise of undying fame." Another public honor was worthily bestowed upon Wordsworth in 1843, when, on the death of Southey, the Lord Chamberlain, with the Queen's approbation, offered him the office of Poet Laureate. The office was at first declined, on the ground that it imposed duties which the poet, * An expression of Mr. Talfourd's, in his beautiful Sonnet, on the Reception of the Poet Wordsworth at Oxford," which is quoted by Professor Reed. Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 361. in his advanced age, could not venture to undertake; but being pressed upon him by the Lord Chamberlain and Sir Robert Peel, it was accepted, under the assurance that the appointment should be considered as imposing no duties, and as merely honorary.* The quiet happiness of Wordsworth's old age was clouded by the death of his only daughter, in July, 1847. "The loss of her," he said to an American gentleman, " had taken the sunshine out of his life." She was the wife of Mr. Edward Quillinan, a gentleman of some distinction as a scholar and an author, and whose death has been recently announced. Time had its mellowing influence upon the poet's heart, and grief directed his hopes to a world of enduring blessings. Upon the fruition of these hopes he entered, in 1850, on the 23d of April, -the day of Shakspeare's birth and of Shaks peare's death. We cannot conclude without a notice of the great service Professor Reed has rendered to the American public, as the Editor of the works of Wordsworth and of his Memoirs. His notes on the poet's writings evince an intelligent and genial appreciation of the author, and tend to cultivate the like quality in others; and his additions to the Memoirs furnish no inconsiderable portion of the most interesting matter they contain. Mr. Reed has lately published a new, and now complete, edition of the poet's works, in a handsome volume, with convenient indices; a book which no American library should be without. No country contains a larger number of intelligent admirers of Wordsworth's genius than our own. His readers are by no means confined to the dwellers in cities and the important centres of literary cultivation. In the village and hamlet, the retired farm and plantation, where Nature's voices are ever speaking, the poet is welcomed and loved as their best interpreter. How could * "The only poem composed by Wordsworth as Poet Laureate, and published, was the Ode on the Installation of Prince Albert as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. This ode, like Gray's on a similar occasion, in the same University, was set to music, and so produced, as part of the ceremonies of the occasion alluded to, in July, 1847."- Note by Prof. Reed. Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 409. In 1845, the poet took a journey to London, to pay his respects to the Queen upon his appointment. "The reception given to me by the Queen, at her ball," he says, in a letter to Prof. Reed, "was most gracious. Mrs. Everett, the wife of your Minister, among many others, was a witness to it, without knowing who I It moved her to the shedding of tears." - Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 420. was. it be otherwise, among men who dwell by the borders of the primeval forest, the boundless prairie or the ocean, the lake or majestic river, or where the mountains are ever smoking around them "like the altars of God"? The time has not yet come to pronounce a complete judgment upon the intellectual character and position of the bard of Rydal Mount. Several generations must pass away before the measure and depth of his influence upon literature can be precisely estimated. It is enough to know that, in some of the highest walks of poetry, he will always be recognized as Father and Chief; that his influence will ever be elevating and ennobling; and that to none more appropriately than to himself can the benediction be ascribed, which his own lips uttered: "Blessings be with them, and eternal praise, ART. VIII. 7. Bowen History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac, and the War of the North American Tribes against the English Colonies after the Conquest of Canada. By FRANCIS PARKMAN, JR. Boston. Boston. Little & Brown. 1851. pp. 630. 8vo. THERE is a melancholy interest in any attempts now made to garner up memorials of the aborigines of this country. Their history, so far as it can be illustrated by direct observation of their peculiar traits of character and modes of life, must soon be written. As a distinct people, preserving their purity of blood and their ancestral characteristics, they are dwindling away as rapidly as the snow melts under an April sun. The very feeble remnants of tribes which continue on this side of the Mississippi, amounting in each case hardly to a score of families, living under the negligent guardianship of the States in which they dwell, still hold the names and manifest some of the physical peculiarities of the great confederacies whence they are descended. But they have been so |