l his own; but he could borrow fifty, for his father's son was
to be trusted to that amount by any family that chanced to have it among
the Atholl hills--therefore he resolved on "a hard service," which

"Gain'd merited respect in simpler times;
When squire, and priest, and they who round them dwelt
In rustic sequestration, all dependent
Upon the PEDLAR'S toil, supplied their wants,
Or pleased their fancies with the ware he brought."

Would Alfred have ceased to be Alfred had he lived twenty years in the
hut where he spoiled the bannocks? Would Gustavus have ceased to be
Gustavus had he been doomed to dree an ignoble life in the obscurest
nook in Dalecarlia? Were princes and peers in our day degraded by
working, in their expatriation, with head or hand for bread? Are the
Polish patriots degraded by working at eighteenpence a-day, without
victuals, on embankments of railroads? "At the risk of giving a shock to
the prejudices of artificial society, I have ever been ready to pay
homage to the aristocracy of nature, under a conviction that vigorous
human-heartedness is the constituent principle of true taste." These are
Wordsworth's own words, and deserve letters of gold. He has given many a
shock to the prejudices of artificial society; and in ten thousand
cases, where the heart of such society was happily sound at the core,
notwithstanding the rotten kitchen-stuff with which it was encrusted,
the shocks have killed the prejudices; and men and women, encouraged to
consult their own breasts, have heard responses there to the truths
uttered in music by the high-souled Bard, assuring them of an existence
there of capacities of pure delight, of which they had had either but a
faint suspicion, or, because "of the world's dread laugh," feared to
indulge, and nearly let die.

Mr Wordsworth quotes from Heron's _Scotland_ an interesting passage,
illustrative of the life led in our country at that time by that class
of persons from whom he has chosen one--not, mind you, imaginary, though
for purposes of imagination--adding that "his own personal knowledge
emboldened him to draw the portrait." In that passage Heron says, "As
they wander, each alone, through thinly-inhabited districts, they form
habits of reflection and of sublime contemplation, and that, with all
their qualifications, no wonder they should contribute much to polish
the roughness and soften the rusticity of our peasantry. In North
America," says