new'st and fin'st, fin'st wear--a?
Come to the pedlar,
Money's a meddler,
That doth alter all men's wear--a!"

One accident in pedlar life was some drawback to its general
pleasantness. He often bore not only a great charge of goods, but of
gold also. His steps were dogged by robbers, and many a skeleton, since
disinterred in solitary places, is the mortal framework of some wandering
merchant who had met with foul play on his circuit. The packman's ghost
too is no unusual spectre in many of our shires.

How important a personage among the _dramatis personae_ of rural life the
pedlar was, at even a recent period, in the northern counties of England,
may be inferred from Wordsworth's choice of him for the hero of his
'Excursion.' Much ridicule, and even obloquy, did the staunch poet of
Rydal incur for choosing such a character, when he might have taken Laras
and Conrads by the score, and been praised for his choice. But "the
vagrant merchant under a heavy load," being a portion of the mountain
life which surrounded the poet's home, was better than any hero of
romance for his purpose; and a younger generation has confirmed the
poet's choice of a hero, and few remain now to mock at the Pedlar.
Wordsworth's pedlar indeed was no Bryce Snailsfoot, nor Donald Bean, nor
even such a one as was first cousin to Andrew Fairservice, but rather, by
virtue of a poetic diploma, a philosopher of the ancient stamp. For

"From his native hills
He wandered far; much did he see of men,
Their manners, their enjoyments and pursuits,
Their passions and their feelings; chiefly those
Essential and eternal in the heart,
That, 'mid the simpler forms of rural life
Exist more simple in their elements,
And speak a plainer language. In the woods,
A lone enthusiast, and among the fields,
Itinerant in this labour, he had passed
The better portion of his time; and there
Spontaneously had his affections thriven
Amid the bounties of the year, the peace
And liberty of nature; there he kept
In solitude and solitary thought,
His mind in a just equipoise of love."

Lucian, in his vision of Hades, beheld the Shades of the Dead set by
pitiless Minos or Rhadamanthus to perform tasks most alien to their
occupations while they were yet denizens of earth. Nero, according to
Rabelais, who improves on Lucian's hint, was an angler in the Lake of
Darkness; Alexander