b with such a noble mien;
Among the shepherd grooms no mate
Hath he, a child of strength and state."

So lives he till he is restored.

"Glad were the vales, and every cottage hearth;
The shepherd-lord was honour'd more and more;
And, ages after he was laid in earth,
'The good Lord Clifford' was the name he bore!"

Now mark--that Poem has been declared by one and all of the "Poets of
Britain" to be equal to anything in the language; and its greatness lies
in the perfect truth of the profound philosophy which so poetically
delineates the education of the naturally noble character of Clifford.
Does he sink in our esteem because at the Feast of the Restoration he
turns a deaf ear to the fervent harper who sings,

"Happy day and mighty hour,
When our shepherd in his power,
Mounted, mail'd, with lance and sword,
To his ancestors restored,
Like a reappearing star,
Like a glory from afar,
First shall head the flock of war"?

No--his generous nature is true to its generous nurture; and now deeply
imbued with the goodness he had too long loved in others ever to forget,
he appears noblest when showing himself faithful in his own hall to the
"huts where poor men lie;" while we know not, at the solemn close, which
life the Poet has most glorified--the humble or the high--whether the
Lord did the Shepherd more ennoble, or the Shepherd the Lord.

Now, we ask, is there any essential difference between what Wordsworth
thus records of the high-born Shepherd-Lord in the Feast of Brougham
Castle, and what he records of the low-born Pedlar in "The Excursion?"
None. They are both educated among the hills; and according to the
nature of their own souls and that of their education, is the
progressive growth and ultimate formation of their character. Both are
exalted beings--because both are wise and good--but to his own coeval he
has given, besides eloquence and genius,

"The vision and the faculty divine,"

that

"When years had brought the philosophic mind"

he might walk through the dominions of the Intellect and the
Imagination, a Sage and a Teacher.

Look into life, and watch the growth of character. Men are not what they
seem to the outward eye--mere machines moving about in customary
occupations--productive labourers of food and wearing apparel--slaves
from morn to night at taskwork set them by the Wealth of Nations. They
are the Children of God. The soul nev