seas, whose ideal murmur seemed a
while to breathe in unison with our Monologue. We have been believing
that in this our native land, the road of merit is the road to
success--say happiness. And is not the law the same in the world of
Literature and the Fine Arts? Give a great genius anything like fair
play, and he will gain glory--nay, bread. True, he may be before his
age, and may have to create his worshippers. But how few such! And is it
a disgrace to an age to produce a genius whose grandeur it cannot all at
once comprehend? The works of genius are surely not often
incomprehensible to the highest contemporary minds, and if they win
their admiration, pity not the poor Poet. But pray syllable the living
Poet's name who has had reason to complain of having fallen on evil
days, or who is with "darkness and with danger compassed round." From
humblest birthplaces in the obscurest nooks frequently have we seen

"The fulgent head
Star-bright appear;"

from unsuspected rest among the water-lilies of the mountain mere, the
snow-white swan in full plumage soar into the sky. Hush! no nonsense
about Wordsworth. "Far-off his coming shone;" and what if for a while
men knew not whether 'twas some mirage-glimmer, or the dawning of a new
"orb of song!"

We have heard rather too much even from that great poet about the
deafness and blindness of the present time. No Time but the future, he
avers, has ears or eyes for divine music and light. Was Homer in his own
day obscure, or Shakespeare? But Heaven forbid we should force the bard
into an argument; we allow him to sit undisturbed by us in the bower
nature delighted to build for him, with small help from his own hands,
at the dim end of that alley green, among lake-murmur and
mountain-shadow, for ever haunted by ennobling visions. But we love and
respect Present Time--partly, we confess, because he has shown some
little kindly feeling for ourselves, whereas we fear Future Time may
forget us among many others of his worthy father's friends, and the name
of Christopher North

"Die on his ears a faint unheeded sound."

But Present Time has not been unjust to William Wordsworth. Some small
temporalities were so; imps running about the feet of Present Time, and
sometimes making him stumble: but on raising his eyes from the ground,
he saw something shining like an Apparition on the mountain-top, and he
hailed, and with a friendly voice, the advent of another tr