the Poor Man held dispute
With his own mind, unable to subdue
Impatience, through inaptness to perceive
General distress in his particular lot;
Or cherishing resentment, or in vain
Struggling against it, with a soul perplex'd,
And finding in herself no steady power
To draw the line of comfort that divides
Calamity, the chastisement of Heaven,
From the injustice of our brother men;
To him appeal was made as to a judge;
Who, with an understanding heart, allay'd
The perturbation; listen'd to the plea;
Resolved the dubious point; and sentence gave
So grounded, so applied, that it was heard
With soften'd spirit--e'en when it condemn'd."

What was to hinder such a man--thus born and thus bred--with such a
youth and such a prime--from being in his old age worthy of walking
among the mountains with Wordsworth, and descanting

"On man, on nature, and on human life?"

And remember he was a _Scotsman_--compatriot of CHRISTOPHER NORTH.

What would you rather have had the Sage in "The Excursion" to have been?
The Senior Fellow of a College? A head? A retired Judge? An Ex-Lord
Chancellor? A Nabob? A Banker? A Millionaire? or, at once to condescend
on individuals, Natus Consumere Fruges, Esquire? or the Honourable
Custos Rotulorum?

You have read, bright bold neophyte, the Song at the Feast of Brougham
Castle, upon the restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the
estates and honours of his ancestors?

"Who is he that bounds with joy
On Carrock's side, a shepherd boy?
No thoughts hath he but thoughts that pass
Light as the wind along the grass.
Can this be He that hither came
In secret, like a smother'd flame?
For whom such thoughtful tears were shed.
For shelter and a poor man's bread?"

Who but the same noble boy whom his high-born mother in disastrous days
had confided when an infant to the care of a peasant. Yet there he is no
longer safe--and

"The Boy must part from Mosedale groves,
And leave Blencathara's ragged coves,
And quit the flowers that summer brings
To Glenderamakin's lofty springs;
Must vanish, and his careless cheer
Be turn'd to heaviness and fear."

Sir Launcelot Threlkeld shelters him till again he is free to set his
foot on the mountains.

"Again he wanders forth at will,
And tends a flock from hill to hill:
His garb is humble; ne'er was seen
Such gar